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JOHN   QUINGY   ADAMS 
WARD 

AN     APPRECIATION 


JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS 
WARD 

AN  APPRECIATION 


WRITTEN  FOR 

THE  NATIONAL  SCULPTURE 

SOCIETY 

BY 

ADELINE  ADAMS 


NEW  YORK 

M  C  M  X  I  I 


H3  X  37 


COPYRIGHT,   I912,  BY  THE 
NATIONAL   SCULPTURE   SOCIETY 


NON    HA    L  OTTIMO    ARTISTA   ALCUN   CONCETTO 
CH'uN   MARMO    solo    in    SE   NON    CIRCOSCRIVA 
COL    SUO    SOVERCHIO,    E    SOLO    A   QUELLO    ARRIVA 
LA   MAN    CHE   OBBEDISCE   ALL'iNTELLETTO. 

MICHELAGNOLO    BUONARROTI 


M32552 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

List  of  Illustrations    .       .        .       .        .       *       .       xi 

Chronological  List  of  Works xiii 

Chapter  I ...        1 

His  farewell  —  His  long  service  in  art  —  Ancestry 
and  birth. —  Early  environment  and  opportunity 

—  He  enters  Brown's  studio. 

Chapter  H 8 

Significance  of  Brown  and  Ward  in  the  develop- 
ment of  American  sculpture  —  Three  periods  — 
A.  The  Dark  Ages  of  sculptural  design  —  B.  The 
middle  period  —  C.  Contemporary  period  —  Pecu- 
liar difficulties  of  middle  period — Brown  and  Veroc- 
chio  compared  —  Jefferson  on  Canova  —  Brown's 
genius  —  Ward's  opportunities  in  Brown's  studio. 

Chapter  HI 15 

Qualities  and  equipment  —  Stay  in  Washington, 
and  busts  modeled  there  —  Return  to  New  York 

—  Portraits  —  Indian  Hunter  and  Freedman  — 
Election  to  Academy  in  1863. 

Chapter  IV 19 

His  peculiar  message  as  an  American  sculptor  — 
Views  on  contemporary  criticism  —  Technical  proc- 
esses —  Patriotism  —  Breadth  of  view  —  Bronze 
casting  in  Brown's  studio  —  Feeling  for  the  classic 

ix 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter  IV. — Continued 

—  Masculine  quality  —  The  Thomas  —  Words  of 
welcome  to  the  women  members  of  the  Sculpture 
Society  —  Personality. 

Chapter  V 27 

Modeling  of  small  objects  —  Rodin  —  Beauty  un- 
related —  Arts  over-correlated  —  Ward's  golden 
mean  —  His  architectural  conception  of  work  — 
The  example  of  the  Farragut  —  Ward's  generosity 
of  spirit. 

Chapter  VI 32 

Statues  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard  —  Central 
Park  statues  —  The  Hunter  —  The  Shakespeare 

—  The  Seventh  Regiment  Soldier  —  The  Pilgrim 

—  Comparison  with  the  Puritan  —  Other  New 
York  statues,  especially  the  Washington  —  The 
Beecher  —  The  Garfield  —  Portrait  busts. 

Chapter  VII 45 

Review  of  works  —  Three  typical  statues,  the 
Hunter,  the  Garfield,  the  Hancock  —  Century 
memorial  addresses  by  Adams,  Mather,  Cary, 
and  Sloane. 

Chapter  VIII 53 

Activities  in  different  organizations  —  Work  upon 
Advisory  Committees  —  Library  of  Congress  — 
Dewey  Arch  —  Lincoln  letter  —  Relation  toward 
clients  —  Honors  received  —  Honors  due  —  Atti- 
tude toward  art  and  life. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 
Portrait  of  John  Quingy  Adams  Ward,  1905  Frontispiece 


AT   THE    END    OF   THE    BOOK 

John  Quingy  Adams  Ward  in  his  studio   . 
Indian  Hunter,  bronze  statue 
The  Peace  Pledge,  group  in  relief     . 
Shakespeare,  bronze  statue     .... 
General  Thomas,  bronze  equestrian  statue 
General  Lafayette,  bronze  statue   . 
General  Washington,  bronze  statue 
The  Garfield  Monument,  bronze     . 
Horage  Greeley,  bronze  statue  ... 
Alexander  Lyman  Holley,  bronze  bust 
Henry  Ward  Beegher,  bronze     . 
General  Hangogk,  bronze  equestrian  statue 
August  Belmont,  Sr.,  bronze  statue 
John  Quingy  Adams  Ward's  Studio 


1857- 


1907 
-1864 
1872 
1872 
1878 
1883 
1883 
1887 
1890 
1890 
1891 
1911 
1911 
1891 


CHRONOLOGICAL  LIST  OF  THE  WORKS  OF 
JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS  WARD 

Bronze  equestrian  statue  of  General  Washington,  Union 
Square,  New  York,  unveiled  July  4,  1856.  (Assist- 
ant to  H.  K.  Brown,  sculptor.) 

Indian  Hunter,  bronze  statue,  Central  Park,  New  York, 
1857-1864 Illustrated. 

Alexander  H.  Stephens,  bust,  1858. 

Senator  Hale,  bust,  1858. 

The  Freedman,  bronze  statuette,  1865. 

Commodore  Matthew  C.  Perry,  statue,  Newport,  R.  I., 
unveiled  October  2,  1868. 

The  Good  Samaritan,  group  in  granite,  commemorating 
the  discovery  of  ether  as  an  anesthetic.  Public  Gar- 
den, Boston,  September  26,  1868. 

Seventh  Regiment  Memorial,  bronze  statue,  Central 
Park,  New  York,  1869-1873. 

The  Peace  Pledge,  group  in  relief.         .       .     Illustrated. 

Shakespeare,  bronze  statue.  Central  Park,  New  York, 
May  23,  1872 Illustrated. 

General  Reynolds,  bronze  statue,  Gettysburg,  August 
31,  1872. 

Israel  Putnam,  bronze  statue,  Hartford,  Conn.,  June  18, 
1874. 

General  Thomas,  bronze  equestrian  statue,  Washington, 

D.  C,  1878 Illustrated. 

xiii 


CHRONOLOGICAL     LIST     OF     WORKS 

William  Gilmore  Simms,  bronze  statue,  Charleston,  S.  C, 

June  11,  1879. 
General  Daniel   Morgan,  bronze   statue,  Spartanburg, 

S.  C.,  1881. 
General  Washington,  bronze  statue,  Newburyport,  Mass. 
General  Lafayette,  bronze  statue,  Burlington,  Vt.,  June 

26,  1883 Illustrated. 

General  Washington,  bronze  statue,  Sub-Treasury,  New 

York,  November  26,  1883 Illustrated. 

Pilgrim,  bronze  statue.   Central  Park,  New  York,  June  6, 

1885. 
The  Garfield  Monument,    bronze,  Washington,   D.  C, 

1887 Illustrated. 

William  E.  Dodge,  bronze  statue.  Herald  Square,  New 

York,  1885. 
Horace  Greeley,  bronze  statue,  Tribune  Building,  New 

York,  1890 Illustrated. 

Alexander    Lyman    Holley,    bronze    bust,    Washington 

Square,  New  York,  1890 Illustrated. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher,  bronze,  Brooklyn,   N.  Y,,  June 

24,  1891 Illustrated. 

Five  Emblematic  Statues,   around  the  cupola  of  State 

Capitol,  Hartford,  Conn. 
Poetry,  statue.  Library  of  Congress,  Washington,  D.  C, 

1897. 
William  H.  Fogg,  bronze  statue.  National  Academy  of 

Design. 
Henry  B.  Hyde,  bronze  statue,  Equitable  Building,  New 

York. 
Naval  Victory,  Dewey  Arch,  New  York,  1899. 
George  William  Curtis,  bronze  bust.  New  Public  Li- 
brary, New  York,  1903. 
Governor  Horace  Fairbanks,  marble  bust,   Public  Li- 
brary, St.  Johnsbury,  Yt. 
Vice-President  Hamlin,  bust. 
Dr.  Valentine  Mott,  bust. 

xiv 


CHRONOLOGICAL     LIST     OF     WORKS 

Joshua  Giddings,  bust. 

James  T.  Brady,  bust. 

Abraham  Cowles,  colossal  bust,  Newark,  N.  J. 

William  H.  Vanderbilt,  bust. 

Colonel  Elliott  F.  Shepard,  marble  bust. 

Dr.  Goodale,  bust,  Columbus,  Ohio. 

Mr.  Corcoran,  marble  bust,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Dr.  Jones,  marble  bust,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Joseph  Drexel,  marble  bust,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Orville  H.  Dewey,  bust. 

Roscoe  Conkling,  bronze  statue,  Madison  Square,  New 

York. 
Pediment  on  New  York  Stock  Exchange,  marble,  1903. 
General  Hancock,  bronze  equestrian  statue,  Fairmount 

Park,  Philadelphia,  1911 Illustrated. 

Soldiers'  and  Sailors'  Monument,  Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  1907. 

General  Sheridan,  equestrian  statue,  1908. 

August  Belmont,  Sr.,  bronze  statue.  .        .     Illustrated. 


CHAPTER  I  '.,^/^\.^\'^^H 

"TT  WILL  say  adieu.  And  when  the  waste  mold  that 
I  encloses  my  personality  shall  have  been  broken,  I 
A  ask  no  greater  honor  than  to  have  my  brother 
sculptors  meet  here,  and  say  a  kind  word  in  my  memory. " 
These  words  were  spoken  by  John  Quincy  Adams  Ward  at 
the  end  of  an  address  in  memory  of  the  young  sculptor, 
Lopez.  They  were  indeed  words  of  farewell :  not  long  after- 
ward, the  waste  mold,  to  use  Ward's  own  figure,  touchingly 
significant  to  men  of  his  own  craft,  was  indeed  broken;  and 
the  kind  word  he  has  asked  of  us  is  but  a  matter  of  truth 
and  justice,  in  rendering  tribute  to  a  personality  that  will 
long  outlast  its  shattered  mold. 

A  certain  wistful  charm,  as  of  imagined  things  that 
might  have  been,  envelops  the  story  of  creators  like  Raphael 
and  Keats,  cut  off  in  the  summer  of  their  hope.  Such  men 
seem  but  as  messengers  of  themselves ;  we  love  them  for  their 
beautiful  promise,  as  well  as  for  the  fair  things  they  have 
had  time  to  do  before  they  were  hurried  away;  and  we  for- 
get, or  cast  aside  as  too  gross,  our  harsh  proverb  concerning 
the  fruit  soon  ripe.  Those  whom  the  gods  love  —  ah, 
what  exquisite  harmonies  must  remain  forever  undis- 
covered, because  such  men  die  young! 

But  no  nimbus  of  incompleteness  lingers  around  the 
achievement  of  Ward;  the  unusual  and  happy  conjunction 
of  early  bud  and  constant  good  fruit  was  granted  to  his 

1 


JOHN     QUINGY     ADAMS     WARD 

genius.  In  him,  age  performed  the  promise  of  youth;  more 
than  half  a  century  of  mastery  was  his.  That  bronze  figure 
of  the  Indian  Hunter,  for  which  he  made  the  first  studies  in 
1857,  and  which  was  finished  in  its  present  form  in  1864, 
and  four  years  later  placed  in  New  York's  Central  Park, 
bears  no  trace  either  of  the  arrogance  or  the  timidity  of  the 
apprentice;  and  his  last  work,  unveiled  in  1911,  the  eques- 
trian st,atw,e ;  of  General  Hancock,  for  Philadelphia's  Fair- 
mount 'F'^rk;  shows  the  strong  mind  and  sure  hand  that 
£h^pe(^;  W^'t^ls'inessage  at  its  best.  In  American  art,  he  is 
at  once  ancestor  and  descendant  —  a  precursor,  yet  a  mod- 
ern instance.  Even  in  his  later  years,  he  is  almost  as  much 
the  typical  "young  man  for  war,"  as  the  "old  man  for 
counsel." 

Times  changed,  and  he,  for  a  longer  moment  than  is  given 
to  most  men,  changed  with  them;  always,  with  that  extra- 
ordinary mind's  eye  of  his,  scanning  the  horizon  for  each 
new  art-problem,  whether  borne  on  the  tide  of  general  prog- 
ress, or  tossed  rocket-like  into  his  consciousness  by  some 
individual  attempt  in  art.  "I  curse  your  stuff,"  he  whim- 
sically cries,  in  an  instant  of  expansion,  speaking  to  a 
younger  sculptor  who  had  been  experimenting  in  the  appli- 
cation of  color  to  sculpture  —  "I  curse  it  roundly!  But  I 
beg  of  you,  keep  on  with  it,  keep  on  in  your  own  way.  For 
it  may  lead  to  something  yet. "  Curiosity,  and  the  desire  for 
beauty  have  each  their  place  in  art,  says  the  critic :  and  the 
Columbus-like  curiosity  for  the  "something  yet"  was  always 
with  Ward.  "  I  want  to  see  every  statue  that  ever  has  been 
made,"  he  muses. 

"His  career,"  writes  Caffin  in  his  "American  Masters  of 
Sculpture,"  "connects  the  past  with  the  present,  spanning 
the  long  interval  like  a  bridge :  one  pier,  embedded  in  the  old 
condition  of  things  when  American  sculptors  first  began  to 
make  America  the  scene  and  inspiration  of  their  art,  its  arch 
mounting  above  the  indifference  to,  and  ignorance  of,  things 
artistic,  which  prevailed  before  the  influence  of  European 

2 


AN     APPRECIATION 

art  began  to  be  felt  here,  and  its  other  pier  firmly  incorpo- 
rated into  the  new  order." 

Only  an  artist  of  exceptional  force  and  initiative  and 
staying  power  could  have  traversed  the  space  that  separates 
our  hesitating  artistic  utterance  of  half  a  century  ago  and 
our  present  fairly  articulate  expression  of  our  national  idea 
in  art.  If  Mr.  Ward's  career  may  indeed  be  likened  to  a 
bridge,  it  is  a  bridge  under  which  much  water  has  already 
flowed.  For  though  our  art  annals  are  still  short,  they  are 
not  exactly  simple;  and  rapid  action  characterizes  the  story. 

Who  were  the  forbears  of  this  sturdy  American  sculptor, 
strong  in  body  and  in  mind,  molded  in  the  type  for  continu- 
ance? They  were  of  the  hardy  English  stock  that  the 
Virginians  were  made  of.  In  1632,  John  W'ard,  of  Norfolk, 
England,  landed  at  Jamestown,  and  established  a  planta- 
tion. This  settler's  grandson.  Colonel  James  Ward,  con- 
stantly active  in  military  and  surveying  expeditions  during 
the  French  and  Indian  War,  was  killed  fighting  Indians  on 
the  frontier  in  1774:  this  grandson's  son.  Colonel  William 
Ward,  moved  from  Virginia  to  Kentucky,  where  he  lived 
until  1789,  when,  attracted  by  the  favorable  conditions  of 
the  Northwest  Territory,  he  became  the  owner  of  large 
tracts  of  land  in  what  is  now  the  state  of  Ohio.  In  1805, 
he  laid  out  and  named  the  town  of  Urbana,  the  county-seat 
of  Champaign  County.  In  this  town,  in  1830,  was  born  his 
grandson,  John  Quincy  Adams  Ward,  destined  to  become 
the  sculptor-laureate  of  his  day.  Thus  Ward  came  of  a 
stock  of  farmers,  fighters,  creators,  constructors:  and  let  it 
not  be  said  that  of  such  stock  no  artist  may  be  born ! 

.  It  is  true  that  in  Ward's  youth  on  a  farm  near  the  grow- 
ing town  of  Urbana,  not  the  least  whilY  of  any  air  remotely 
resembling  that  which  we  call  an  art  atmosphere  ever  reached 
his  nostrils.  Urbana  was  not  different  from  other  grow- 
ing towns  of  that  period.  Even  in  liberal  New  York,  youth 
counted  it  a  dissipation  to  view  the  Greek  Slave,  by  Hiram 
Powers;    and    "when    this  statue  was   first    exhibited    in 

3 


JOHN     QUINCY    ADAMS    WARD 

Cincinnati,  a  delegation  of  clergymen  was  sent  to  judge 
whether  it  were  fit  to  be  seen  by  Christian  people."  This 
point  settled,  and  public  morals  declared  safe,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible danger  from  Powers  was  concerned,  young  Ward  made 
the  pilgrimage,  and  saw  the  statue.  '*  I  would  have  gone 
through  any  imaginable  privation,"  said  he,  years  later, 
"had  I  been  able  to  speak  to  the  sculptor  that  day!" 

Yet  in  spite  of  the  hard  conditions  of  the  time,  the  boy's 
creative  and  constructive  instinct,  derived  from  fort-build- 
ing and  town-making  forefathers,  produced  its  own  art 
atmosphere,  where  none  was  found  ready-made.  In  his  early 
years  on  the  farm,  a  close  and  loving  observation  of  nature 
was  developed,  as  may  be  learned  from  the  Reminiscences 
written  by  Ward  seventy  years  after  certain  happenings  in 
his  boyhood.  "The  narrative  is  remarkable,"  says  the 
editor  to  whose  paper  the  sketch  was  contributed,  "for  its 
beautiful  and  vigorous  English,  which  leads  to  the  belief  that 
Ward  might  have  been  America's  dean  of  literature  instead 
of  sculpture,  had  he  chosen  the  life  of  a  man  of  letters." 
Editorial  enthusiasms  aside,  one  calls  to  mind,  on  reading 
the  sketch,  Octave  Mirbeau's  words  in  the  preface  to  "Marie 
Claire."  "Ce  qui  nous  etonne  surtout,  ce  qui  nous  sub- 
jugue,  c'est  la  force  de  Taction  interieure,  et  c'est  toute  la 
lumiere  douce  et  chantante  qui  se  leve,  comme  le  soleil  sur 
un  beau  matin  d'ete.  Et  Ton  sent  bien  souvent  passer  la 
phrase  des  grands  ecrivains."  Yes,  the  phrase  of  the  great 
writers  is  often  Ward's. 

He  writes  thus:  "A  flock  of  murderously  close-plucked 
geese,  marked  with  a  daub  of  red  paint  on  the  back  of  their 
heads,  moved  leisurely  over  the  place,  nipping  the  struggling 
grass  under  the  fennel,  the  old  boss  gander  who  dragged  a 
broken  wing  keeping  a  wary  eye  on  any  passing  boy.  The 
little  daisy-shaped  flower  and  the  strong  peculiar  odor  of  the 
fennel  come  back  to  me  now  with  the  freshness  of  yesterday." 

Of  "Flago's  spotted  cow":  "The  muffled  clank  of  her 
bell  as  she  fed  among  the  tall  iron  weeds  always  set  me 

4 


AN     APPRECIATION 

dreaming    of  some  different  and  far-off  life  —  something 
hoped  for,  yet  feared." 

Even  the  sordid  details  of  the  farm  topography  have  their 
poetic  significance  in  the  boy's  growing  mind:  "Around  the 
flattened  ash  dumps  queer  bits  of  old  iron  suggested  the 
possibilities  of  vast  and  complicated  machinery.  The  grin- 
ning white  pegs  in  the  parted  soles  of  warped  and  blackened 
old  boots  suggested  the  heads  and  teeth  of  crocodiles  and 
alligators ;  and  once,  after  reading  in  a  Sunday-school  book 
about  Hindoo  mothers  sacrificing  their  children  to  the  croc- 
odiles on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges,  I  placed  some  of  these  old 
shoes  on  the  edge  of  the  pond,  and  put  mud  babies  in  their 
mouths." 

The  classic  troop  of  mud  babies,  dough  rabbits,  beeswax 
soldiers,  and  putty  horses  which  a  naive  tradition  grants  to 
the  childhood  of  every  sculptor  really  existed  in  Ward's  case. 
He  created  his  own  art  atmosphere,  and  the  little  world 
enveloped  therein  he  peopled  with  all  sorts  of  figures  made 
from  clay,  wax,  or  whatever  material  his  hands  could  find. 
The  local  potter  "became  his  friend,  and  gave  him  the  free- 
dom of  his  workshop. "  This  brings  him  to  sculpture's  very 
brink  —  a  perilous  position  for  a  youth  whose  family  would 
have  him  become  a  farmer,  or  a  merchant,  or  a  physician. 

At  sixteen,  he  was  taken  from  school  to  assist  on  the  farm, 
and  the  world-old  struggle  of  ambitious  youth  began  within 
him  —  the  struggle  between  inclination  and  duty.  His 
heart  was  not  in  any  of  the  different  kinds  of  work  he  tried  to 
do,  hoping  against  hope  to  square  his  own  convictions  with 
the  desires  of  his  family.  As  it  is  the  tendency  of  romantic 
human  nature  to  exaggerate  the  rigors  of  early  struggle,  the 
dignified  words  of  Greenough  concerning  his  own  aspira- 
tions may  here  be  remembered:  "My  friends  opposed  my 
studying  the  art,  but  gently,  reasonably,  kindly."  Ward 
had  nothing  of  the  minor  poet  about  him,  and  in  telling  the 
story  of  his  youth,  never  showed  the  minor  poet's  yearn- 
ing for  the  martyr's  crown ;  you  are  not  asked  to  drop  the 

5 


JOHN     QUINGY     ADAMS     WARD 

sentimental  tear  for  young  genius  misunderstood.  Probably 
his  labors  were  good  for  him. 

For  nearly  three  years  he  remained  on  the  farm,  but  he 
was  neither  happy  nor  successful:  his  family,  seeing  this, 
permitted  him  to  take  up  the  study  of  medicine,  in  which  he 
thereupon  engaged  himself  for  a  brief  period.  His  health 
having  given  way,  a  visit  to  a  sister  in  Brooklyn  was  sug- 
gested. Henry  Kirke  Brown,  the  sculptor,  had  a  studio  in 
that  city.  Ward's  sister  had  talked  with  Brown  on  the  sub- 
ject nearest  to  the  boy's  heart  —  the  opportunity  to  study 
sculpture  — but  the  result  was  not  encouraging.  "If  you 
think  you  have  genius  of  the  highest  order,''  wrote  his  sister, 
"you  may  come  on  and  study." 

It  is  a  rather  large  contract  which  calls  for  "genius  of  the 
highest  order";  Ward's  youthful  modesty  would  not  permit 
him  to  believe  himself  thus  supremely  gifted,  and  he  went 
back  to  the  farm.  Nevertheless,  as  his  health  did  not 
improve,  the  visit  to  Brooklyn  was  after  all  accomplished. 
He  had  lost  confidence  in  himself,  and  some  persuasion  was 
now  required  before  he  could  bring  himself  to  go  to  Brown's 
studio.  Once  there,  however,  the  inspiring  sight  of  clay, 
plaster,  marble,  and  all  the  sacred  apphances  of  genius 
aroused  his  ambition  again.  In  the  end,  he  overcame  the 
natural  prejudice  of  his  family  against  art  —  it  is  to  be  noted 
that  in  such  cases  little  is  said  of  the  natural  prejudice  of  art 
against  the  family  —  and  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  he  began 
work  in  Brown's  studio,  where  he  remained  seven  fortunate 
years.  He  began  as  a  paying  pupil,  continued  as  a  paid 
assistant,  and  emerged  as  a  young  sculptor  well  fitted  to  win 
his  own  way. 

In  his  case,  as  in  that  of  his  friend,  William  Dean  Howells, 
and  many  another  exceptional  Ohio  boy,  there  was  a  natural 
reaction  against  the  "westward  pressure  of  the  races"  —  a 
return  backward  upon  civilization's  steps,  in  the  search  for 
the  particular  place  that  needed  him  and  his  gifts.  New 
York  needed  Ward;  and  aside  from  brief  visits  to  Europe 

6 


AN     APPRECIATION 

for  travel  and  study,  and  certain  memorable  hunting  trips 
in  the  West  and  South,  he  passed  the  rest  of  his  life  working 
in  New  York.  Here,  when  prosperity  came,  he  built  him  a 
house  and  studio.  He  acquired  also  a  beautiful  and  beloved 
summer  home  in  the  Catskills,  finding  his  necessary  rest  and 
recreation  in  outdoor  life  and  sport  there.  All  his  days,  he 
was  a  hard  worker  and  a  good  sportsman. 


CHAPTER  II 

A  BRIEF  survey  of  American  sculpture  will  help  us  to 
understand  the  true  significance  of  men  like  Brown 
and  Ward  in  the  scheme  of  our  artistic  redemption. 
A  rough  and  ready  classification  of  our  national  achievement 
in  sculpture  might  grant  it  three  periods,  and,  as  has  already 
been  said,  Ward  was  sufficiently  the  Colossus  to  bestride  the 
last  two  of  these.  Our  British  ambassador,  whose  genial 
studies  of  the  English-speaking  peoples  have  continued  for 
more  than  forty  years,  has  lately  reminded  us  of  the  truth 
that  the  Englishman  and  the  American  have  never  yet  been 
the  great  artists  of  the  world.  The  American  colonists — 
Heaven  help  them ! — had  troubles  of  their  own,  that  filched 
away  the  time  they  might  have  had  for  thinking  on  the 
Beautiful.  Thus  the  first  act  in  the  drama  of  our  national 
art  moves  languidly  enough  through  two  centuries  of  time : 
and  the  art  of  sculpture  may  be  excused  for  lagging  a  little 
behind  her  more  lightly-stepping  sister,  the  art  of  painting, 
since  sculpture  is  far  more  heavily  weighted  by  her  material 
accoutrements.  A  wealthy  colonist,  yearning  for  examples 
of  art,  might  more  easily  import  a  picture  than  a  statue. 
Smybert  and  other  limners  came  to  us  more  than  half  a 
century  before  the  sculptors,  Houdon  and  Ceracchi. 

Our  first  period,  our  American  Dark  Ages  of  sculptural 
design,  produced  but  a  slender  output,  consisting  chiefly  of 
modern  civilization's  early  luxury,  the  portrait,  and   her 

8 


AN    APPRECIATION 

early  necessity,  the  tombstone.  Yet  not  without  value,  both 
artistic  and  historic,  were  these  meager  beginnings.  For 
instance,  the  American  who  desires  to  perfect  his  knowledge 
of  lettering,  will  look  to  it  that  his  acquaintance  with  classic 
and  Renaissance  forms  is  supplemented  by  a  study  of  the 
naive  inscriptions  on  the  slate  burial  stones  now  crumbling 
on  forgotten  hillsides,  or  hemmed  in  by  the  traffic  of  great 
cities,  here  in  the  United  States. 

Our  second  period  in  sculpture  had  naturally  far  more 
movement  and  color  and  variety :  its  early  activities  centred 
around  our  struggling  national  consciousness,  which  showed 
itself  (to  speak  of  but  one  way)  in  the  building  and  decora- 
tion of  our  national  Capitol,  and  which  gained  new  force 
after  the  War  of  1812,  and  the  destruction  at  Washington 
incident  thereto.  This  second  period  gave  us  not  only  our 
first  equestrian  statues,  but  a  host  of  more  or  less  successful 
busts,  figures,  and  groups;  it  started  with  Greenough  and 
Crawford  and  Powers,  and  ended  with  that  Great  Awaken- 
ing, the  Centennial.  Our  contemporary  period  dates  from 
that  magic  moment,  the  year  1876.  It  was  a  sublime  in- 
stant :  we  beheld  a  great  light ;  and  by  it  we  almost  saw  our- 
selves as  other  see  us.  What  a  difference  between  the 
American  sculpture  shown  at  the  Centennial  and  that 
exhibited  at  the  Chicago  World's  Fair,  in  1893!  The  world 
had  not  supposed  us  capable  of  such  progress.  Without  the 
reminders  of  thoughtful  observers  like  Mr.  Bryce,  we  might 
forget  that  we  are  not  art's  chosen  people. 

Most  of  the  sculptors  of  our  important  middle  period 
were  of  the  Early  Exodist  variety.  These  men  have  in- 
curred the  displeasure  of  the  ultra-patriotic;  but  seen  in  sober 
perspective,  their  Hegira  is  something  that  could  hardly 
have  been  helped.  Their  environment  was  unsuitable ;  their 
art-impulse  desired  a  better  country.  In  the  thirties  and 
forties,  the  young  sculptor  who  remained  in  America  to  do 
his  work  must  have  had  great  independence  of  mind  or  excep- 
tional opportunity  for  production ;  or  else,  as  the  smug  little 

9 


JOHN     QUINCY     ADAMS    WARD 

Stevenson  boy  observes,  "his  dear  papa  was  poor."  There 
were  few  casts  and  practically  no  photographs  to  teach  us 
the  splendors  of  Old  World  art;  and  steel  engravings,  how- 
ever excellent  in  themselves,  could  scarcely  point  out  the 
whole  plan  of  artistic  salvation. 

In  the  matter  of  reproducing  his  work,  the  sculptor  was 
at  a  disadvantage,  both  as  to  marble  and  bronze.  American 
marble  suitable  for  sculpture  was  then  even  more  difficult  to 
obtain  than  it  is  now;  and  the  use  of  Italian  marble  involved 
expense,  delay,  and  frequent  disappointment.  It  was  not 
until  the  year  1847  that  the  casting  of  a  large  statue  in 
bronze  was  accomplished  in  America;  nor  was  the  result  a 
remarkable  success.  The  statue  was  of  Doctor  Bowditch, 
of  Boston,  and  was  by  the  Englishman,  Ball  Hughes:  its 
material  was  not  the  "imperishable  bronze"  of  song  and 
story,  since  the  original  cast  in  Mount  Auburn  has  been 
replaced  by  a  replica  bearing  the  legend  "Recast  by  Gruet 
Jne.,  Fondeur,  Paris,  1886."  In  1852,  the  year  before 
Brown's  Washington  was  begun,  Clark  Mills,  after  incred- 
ible difficulties,  succeeded  in  casting  his  equestrian  statue  of 
Andrew  Jackson. 

Decidedly  the  odds  were  against  the  art  of  sculpture  in 
America!  With  little  stimulus  save  his  own  imagination, 
and  with  his  very  tools  and  materials  warring  against  him, 
many  a  young  sculptor  concluded  that  the  best  way  to  meet 
his  difficulties  was  to  turn  his  back  upon  them  forever. 
"ItaUam  venit"  is  all  that  may  be  written  of  many  a  gifted 
young  man  who  crossed  the  seas  in  search  of  favoring  skies. 
Too  often  the  artist  found  Italy,  but  never  really  found  him- 
self. Some  men,  however,  were  made  of  stouter  stuff,  and 
Henry  Kirke  Brown  was  one  of  these. 

The  career  of  Brown  affords  a  certain  parallel  to  that  of 
Verocchio,  whose  race  was  run  four  centuries  earlier.  Like 
Verocchio,  Brown  may  be  called  a  man  of  one  masterpiece. 
As  Verocchio's  name  is  known  to  the  world  through  his 
equestrian  statue  of  the  great  condottiere,  Bartolommeo 

10 


AN     APPRECIATION 

CoUeoni,  so  Brown's  will  endure  because  of  his  equestrian 
statue  of  a  soldier  of  a  different  stamp,  General  Washington. 
Again,  each  of  these  artists,  in  framing  the  masterpiece  on 
which  his  fame  rests,  and  for  which  his  own  genius  is  respon- 
sible, had  the  assistance  of  a  younger  man,  a  man  of  more 
ardent  temperament:  though  this  is  by  no  means  to  assert 
that  Ward,  in  the  Washington,  played  a  part  equal  to  that 
ascribed  to  Leopardi  in  the  Colleoni.  And  whatever  their 
limitations,  both  Brown  and  Verocchio  had  the  supreme  gift 
of  being  the  men  for  the  hour.  Symonds  speaks  of  Veroc- 
chio's  "limited  powers,  meager  manner,  and  prosaic  mind," 
and  in  the  same  breath  declares  that  "few  men  have  exer- 
cised at  a  very  critical  moment  a  more  decided  influence. " 
So,  too,  the  critic  who  states  that  Brown  was  not  a  great 
sculptor,  invariably  hastens  to  observe  that  he  nevertheless 
did  a  great  work.  Surely  he  was  one  of  the  strong  forces  in 
the  shaping,  or  rather  the  reshaping  of  our  American  sculp- 
ture. 

Had  our  country  received  a  longer  visit  from  Houdon,  to 
whom  we  owe  sterling  portraits  of  Washington,  Franklin, 
and  John  Paul  Jones,  we  might  perhaps  have  derived  from 
this  great  French  sculptor  a  vigorous  naturalistic  tradition 
—  a  tradition  not  exalted,  perhaps,  but  assuredly  whole- 
some. "Copiez,  copiez  toujours,  et  surtout  copiez  juste" 
was  Houdon's  counsel  to  the  young  artists  of  his  own 
country;  but  this  maxim  does  not  by  any  means  sufficiently 
indicate  the  real  worth  of  his  work  in  eighteenth-century 
sculpture.  But  our  nineteenth-century  sculpture  failed  to 
assimilate  his  robust  quality,  and  until  the  appearance  of 
Brown,  was  mainly  dominated  by  the  influences  of  Canova 
and  Thorwaldsen.  Even  to  this  day  we,  as  a  people,  are  said 
to  be  sentimental  in  our  art. 

A  side  light  on  early  conditions  is  thrown  by  a  letter  of 
Thomas  Jefferson,  lately  published  by  the  North  Carolina 
Historical  Commission.  This  letter  was  written  from 
Monticeilo  in  1816,  on  the  subject  of  the  statue  of  General 

11 


JOHN    QUINCY    ADAMS    WARD 

Washington  which  the  legislature  of  North  Carolina  had 
ordered  to  be  procured. 

"Who  should  make  it?  There  can  be  but  one  answer  to 
this:  Old  Canove  of  Rome.  No  artist  in  Europe  would 
place  himself  in  a  line  with  him ;  and  for  thirty  years,  within 
my  own  knowledge,  he  has  been  considered  by  all  Europe 
as  without  a  rival.  He  draws  his  blocks  from  Carara,  and 
delivers  the  statue  compleat  and  packed  for  transportation 
at  Rome.  ...  I  am  not  able  to  be  exact  as  to  the  price. 
We  gave  Houdon  at  Paris  1000  guineas  for  the  one  he  made 
for  this  state;  but  he  solemnly  and  feelingly  protested 
against  the  inadequacy  of  the  price,  and  evidently  undertook 
it  on  motives  of  reputation  alone.  He  was  the  first  artist  in 
France,  and  being  willing  to  come  over  to  take  the  model  of 
the  General,  which  we  could  not  have  got  Canove  to  have 
done,  that  circumstance  decided  on  his  employment.  We 
paid  him  additionally  for  coming  over  about  500  guineas, 
and  when  the  statue  was  done  we  paid  the  expenses  of  one 
of  his  under-workmen  to  come  over  and  set  it  up,  which 
might  perhaps  be  100  guineas  more.  I  suppose  therefore  it 
cost  us  in  the  whole  8000  D.,  but  this  was  only  of  the  size  of 
the  life.  Yours  should  be  something  larger.  The  difference 
it  makes  in  the  impression  can  scarcely  be  conceived.  As  to 
the  style  or  costume,  I  am  sure  the  artist,  and  every  person 
of  taste  in  Europe  would  be  for  the  Roman,  the  effect  of 
which  is  undoubtedly  of  a  different  order.  Our  boots  and 
regimentals  have  a  very  puny  effect.  Works  of  this  kind 
are  about  one  third  cheaper  at  Rome  than  Paris;  but  Ca- 
nove's  eminence  will  be  a  sensible  ingredient  in  price.  I 
think  that  for  such  a  statue,  with  a  plain  pedestal,  you  would 
have  a  good  bargain  from  Canove  at  7000  or  8000  D.  and 
should  not  be  surprised  were  he  to  require  10000  D.  to  which 
you  would  have  to  add  the  charges  of  bringing  over  and  set- 
ting up.  The  one  half  of  the  price  would  probably  have  to 
be  advanced,  and  the  other  half  paid  on  delivery. " 

The  statue  was  ordered,  made,  and  delivered.     In  1822, 

12 


AN    APPRECIATION 

in  obedience  to  a  resolution  of  the  legislature  of  North 
Carolina,  Governor  Holmes  writes  to  Canova  of  the  com- 
pleted work: 

'*It  commands  the  wonder  and  applause  of  the  Western 
Hemisphere,  and  will  prove  to  the  young  enthusiastic  artist 
of  the  New  World,  what  the  sublime  labors  of  Praxiteles  and 
Phidias,  those  favorite  sons  of  Greece,  did  to  their  imitative 
brethren  and  admiring  spectators,  chaste  models  of  admira- 
tion and  perfection." 

I  have  ventured  thus  to  dwell  upon  certain  matters  of 
ancient  history  in  American  sculpture,  because  it  is  only  by 
a  study  of  the  conditions  and  by  comparison  with  his  im- 
mediate predecessors  that  a  man  like  Brown  may  be  appre- 
ciated :  and  Brown  had  of  course  a  strong  influence  on  Ward's 
career.  Fortified  by  examples  of  "old  Canove"  and  "the 
classick  stile, "  the  New  World's  "young  enterprising  artist" 
was  indeed  developing,  but  he  was  still  in  his  imitative  stage. 
At  the  time  of  Canova's  death  in  1822,  and  for  a  generation 
afterward,  sculpture  throughout  the  world  was  lacking  in 
real  creative  force.  In  America  as  elsewhere,  there  was  sore 
need  of  a  little  leaven  of  initiative  to  leaven  the  whole  lump 
of  imitation  in  art.  Brown  had  initiative  enough  to  pro- 
duce one  of  the  best  equestrian  statues  we  have. 

Born  in  1814,  he  began  his  art  studies  early;  but  he  was 
twenty-eight  years  of  age  when  his  long-cherished  plan  for 
study  abroad  was  carried  out.  Paris  had  not  yet  become 
the  world's  great  art  school.  Brown  spent  four  years  in 
Italy,  but  rejected  the  lifeless  tradition  of  pseudo-classicism. 
He  had  weighed  the  ideals  of  Canova  in  the  balance  of  his 
Yankee  philosopher's  brain,  and  had  found  them  wanting. 
Ward,  his  enthusiastic  young  disciple,  was  naturally,  both 
from  temperament  and  from  circumstance,  ready  to  follow 
Brown's  example,  and  to  out-Brown  Brown  himself,  if  nec- 
essary, in  registering  a  protest  against  the  emasculate  in  art. 
The  seven  years  spent  with  this  sculptor  were  invaluable  for 
the  Ohio  boy's  development  as  man  and  artist. 

13 


JOHN     QUINGY     ADAMS     WARD 

Besides  receiving  a  well-nigh  ideal  training  in  his  art  and 
its  supplementary  technical  processes,  he  had  the  privilege 
of  meeting  the  leading  men  of  the  country  —  the  leading 
men  in  letters,  art,  science,  and  statesmanship.  One  of  the 
advantages  enjoyed  by  Brown's  pupils  —  an  advantage 
uncommon  in  the  fifties  —  was  an  evening  drawing  class  in 
which  master  and  students  worked  together  from  the  living 
model.  Among  Ward's  fellow-students  from  1853  to  1855 
was  Larkin  Mead,  the  young  Vermont  sculptor,  who  later 
went  to  Florence,  where  he  joined  another  Vermonter,  the 
veteran  sculptor,  Hiram  Powers.  An  interesting  friendship 
had  sprung  up  between  Ward  and  Mead,  but  the  latter 
chose  Italy  for  his  permanent  workground,  while  Ward 
remained  in  his  own  country.  Ward  was  five  years  the 
elder,  according  to  dates,  but  present-day  criticism  finds 
his  work  more  modern  in  spirit  than  that  of  his  friend. 

Far  more  than  the  young  sculptor  of  to-day  can  realize, 
much  of  Ward's  production  during  his  mature  years  was  in 
advance  of  his  day  and  generation.  It  was  fortunate  for 
him  and  for  the  art  of  his  country  that  his  priceless  native 
gift  of  independent  vision  was  not  lost  or  mislaid  during 
those  wonder-working  years  of  apprenticeship.  Instinct 
in  selection  is  one  of  the  artist's  most  precious  qualities, 
whether  that  instinct  be  directed  toward  the  tangled  web  of 
material  offered  by  every  subject  in  art,  or  toward  the  count- 
less influences  life  daily  pours  around  him;  and  of  the  dif- 
ferent elements  of  growth  found  in  Brown's  studio.  Ward's 
mind,  like  a  strong  plant  in  a  goodly  garden,  chose  eagerly 
and  unerringly  just  what  it  needed  for  its  highest  develop- 
ment. 


14 


CHAPTER  III 

WARD'S  choice  of  a  career  was  early  confirmed  by 
his  evident  ability.  His  artistic  equipment  natu- 
rally differed  somewhat  from  that  of  the  young 
sculptor  of  to-day.  It  excluded  all  that  the  Paris  schools 
give  to-day  by  their  situation  near  the  base  of  supplies  of 
historic  untransplanted  examples  in  art,  their  peculiarly  in- 
spiring intellectual  environment,  their  contact  with  men  of 
widely  differing  types,  their  stimulus  of  camaraderie,  that 
generous  relation  which,  inviolate  in  youth,  almost  inevit- 
ably loses  something  of  its  integrity  between  men,  after  the 
real  struggle  has  once  set  in.  On  the  other  hand,  he  formed 
desirable  acquaintances  among  his  own  countrymen;  and 
his  training  included  a  fairly  large  and  varied  experience  in 
work  on  productions  destined  for  the  market-place,  not  for 
the  clay-bin  —  productions  which  of  necessity  were  pushed 
through  to  the  bitter  end,  according  to  contract.  The  abso- 
lute destruction  of  a  student's  piece  of  work  permits  many 
pleasant  illusions  about  it.  Ward  had  the  advantage  of 
seeing  work  subjected  to  a  rude  sort  of  acid  test  in  being 
placed  before  the  public,  an  experience  often  more  educa- 
tional than  enjoyable.  Entering  heart  and  soul  into  his 
master's  projects,  he  soon  learned  how  like  a  searchlight 
is  the  public  gaze,  discovering  in  a  work  of  art  flaws  that 
no  studio  light  could  ever  reveal. 

To  the  man  in  him  as  well  as  to  the  artist,  he  owed  the 

15 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

recognition  the  years  began  to  bring.  The  practical  work- 
ing heroic  quaUties  of  a  man  were  his  —  honesty,  enthusi- 
asm, common  sense,  mental  and  physical  vigor,  the  pioneer's 
ability  to  emerge  in  case  of  an  emergency.  He  therefore 
engaged  and  retained  the  confidence  of  his  fellow-men. 
John  La  Farge,  in  writing  of  Delacroix,  quotes  from  the 
French  painter's  journal  a  pious  wish,  fervently  expressed, 
"never  to  belong  to  any  of  those  trades  of  humbug  which 
influence  the  human  race. "  A  similar  wish  dwelt  always  in 
Ward's  mind. 

His  beginnings  were  not  phenomenal,  either  as  to  unpre- 
cedented struggles  or  unmeasured  success.  He  never  at  any 
time  merited  the  adjective  "meteoric,"  which  the  more  or 
less  happy  headlines  of  intensive  journalism  once  fastened 
upon  the  brilliant  young  sculptor,  Macmonnies.  The  bit- 
ter and  the  sweet  of  his  early  experiences  wholesomely 
tempered  each  other.  On  finishing  his  engagement  with 
Brown,  he  did  not  immediately  leave  the  Brooklyn  studio, 
but  carried  on  his  own  work  there  for  a  short  time.  In 
1859  he  went  to  Washington,  where  he  remained  for  two 
winters  during  the  sessions  of  Congress,  and  modeled  several 
busts.  Those  were  the  days  of  the  supreme  intellectual 
conflict  preceding  our  Civil  War,  and  Ward's  mind  doubt- 
less matured  greatly  under  the  stimulus  of  life  in  Washing- 
ton. He  made  portraits  of  Senator  Hale  of  New  Hamp- 
shire, of  Joshua  R.  Giddings  of  Ohio,  and  of  Alexander  H. 
Stephens  of  Georgia.  One  can  scarcely  imagine  two  men 
farther  apart  in  their  points  of  view  than  Giddings  and 
Stephens;  Giddings,  the  first  Western  abolitionist  member 
of  Congress,  had  for  twenty  years  made  it  the  chief  object  of 
his  life  to  bring  up  the  burning  question  for  debate,  both  in 
season  and  out,  while  Stephens,  though  at  first  opposing  the 
principles  of  secession,  yielded  to  them  in  the  end,  and  be- 
came Vice-President  of  the  Confederacy.  The  bust  of  Ste- 
phens, begun  in  Washington,  was  finished  in  Stephens's 
Georgia  home,  where  Ward  saw  slavery  in  its  milder  aspects. 

16 


AN      APPRECIATION 

From  such  experiences,  a  thoughtful  young  man  must  have 
gained  greatly  in  breadth  of  view. 

In  1861,  he  opened  a  studio  in  New  York,  his  time  for  the 
next  two  or  three  years  being  given  to  portrait  busts,  orna- 
mental modeling  and  designing,  and  also,  what  probably 
pleased  him  best,  study  upon  his  Indian  Hunter,  his  Freed- 
man,  and  other  compositions.  Among  his  sitters  at  this 
time  were  Dr.  Orville  Dewey,  the  Unitarian  clergyman  and 
writer,  and  Dr.  Valentine  Mott,  the  famous  surgeon.  The 
Freedman,  a  bronze  statuette  appearing  in  1865,  is  Ward's 
answer  to  the  great  national  question  which  he  had  heard 
discussed  from  his  youth  up,  and  which  had  become  in- 
finitely grave  during  his  sojourn  in  Washington.  The  fig- 
ure was  never  executed  in  a  larger  size;  it  nevertheless 
created  a  sensation,  for  which  its  timeliness  was  in  a  meas- 
ure responsible.  It  represents,  very  gravely  and  simply,  a 
seated  slave  who  has  burst  his  bonds.  If  the  Freedman 
may  be  interpreted  as  answering  one  question  of  the  day,  it 
may  also  be  said  to  ask  another  question,  which  has  scarcely 
been  answered  up  to  the  present;  the  negro,  looking  at  his 
broken  fetters,  seems  to  ask  what  he  is  to  do  next.  It  is 
with  great  soberness  and  restraint  that  the  artist  has  sug- 
gested this  inquiry,  for  like  the  Hunter,  the  Freedman  is 
conceived  in  the  true  classic  spirit.  Both  of  these  works, 
with  their  broad  objective  statement  of  fact  supplemented 
by  their  appeal  to  the  beholder's  sympathetic  imagination, 
foreshadow  the  quality  of  Ward's  later  achievement. 

His  election  to  the  National  Academy  of  Design  in  1863, 
his  completion  of  the  Indian  Hunter  in  1864,  the  acceptance 
of  that  work  by  the  Central  Park  Commissioners,  together 
with  the  successful  exhibition  of  both  the  Freedman  and 
the  Hunter  at  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1867,  definitely  and 
brilliantly  conclude  the  prologue  to  his  career.  I  have 
purposely  said  "prologue"  rather  than  "formative  pe- 
riod, "  because  in  a  large  and  sane  development  like  Ward's, 
the  formative  period  can  never  be  considered  as  a  closed 

17 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

incident.  He  was  by  nature  a  man  peculiarly  fitted  to  meet 
his  fellow  beings,  and  to  give  and  take  largely  in  his  con- 
tact with  life.  His  destiny  called  him  to  be  one  of  the 
fortunate  few  who  throughout  a  long  life-cycle  may  grow 
without  ceasing. 


13 


CHAPTER  IV 

IN  later  years,  as  President  of  the  National  Academy 
of  Design,  Ward,  with  characteristic  directness, 
once  warned  that  august  body  against  ''dropping  into 
a  conceited  security."  This  warning  duly  in  mind,  we 
nevertheless  need  not  be  ashamed  of  what  our  country 
has  accomplished  in  sculpture,  and  we  know  that  the  works 
of  our  best  sculptors  are  valued  in  other  lands.  What 
then  was  the  peculiar  message  of  Ward  as  an  American 
sculptor?  What  was  his  individual  contribution  to  our 
art  history?  What  gifts  had  he  that  other  men  had  not? 
Wherein  did  that  "personality"  whose  "waste  mold"  has 
lately  been  broken  differ  from  or  resemble  or  transcend 
other  personalities  of  the  time? 

Mr.  Ward  himself  said,  concerning  the  young  sculptor, 
Lopez,  "  Contemporary  criticism  is  always  of  doubtful  value; 
I  shall  not  compare  him  with  any  of  his  contemporaries, 
for  this  would  be  absurd,  inasmuch  as,  if  an  artist  has  an 
individuality,  it  cannot  be  compared  with  the  individuality 
of  another.  Each  takes  his  own  point  of  view  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  gives  us  something  different — so  different — and 
yet  so  interesting,  that  it  would  be  perilously  near  foolish- 
ness to  say,  this  one  is  the  greatest  painter,  that  one  the 
greatest  sculptor,  of  the  day. " 

This  is  high  ground;  not  all  of  us  can  attain  unto  it. 
Some  of  us  may  even  believe,  with  the  critic,  that  "progress 

19 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

of  the  mind  consists  for  the  most  part  in  differentiation," 
and  will  go  our  way,  differentiating. 

To  begin  with  the  thing  of  lesser  moment,  yet  important, 
no  other  American  sculptor  ever  worked  more  manfully  than 
he  to  encourage  in  his  own  country  the  various  technical 
processes  upon  which  sculpture  depends  for  its  truthful 
presentation.  Further,  no  other  ever  anchored  his  hope  so 
firmly  as  he,  in  the  value  of  the  American  idea,  the  American 
standpoint,  the  American  basis  —  bias,  if  you  will  —  for  the 
noblest  development  of  our  nation's  art.  No  other  ever  sur- 
passed him  in  sheer  virility  of  purpose  and  act.  But  over 
and  above  and  beyond  these  things,  few  artists  of  any  period 
have  been  so  gifted  as  he,  in  greatness  of  vision,  in  passion 
for  truth,  in  feeling  for  proportion,  not  only  in  the  daily  mat- 
ters of  his  art,  but  in  the  larger  business  of  the  relation  of 
that  art  to  human  life. 

We  are  but  too  familiar  with  the  practical  difficulties 
which  beset  the  sculptor  in  all  his  works  —  the  conditions 
which,  even  in  his  highest  flights,  cripple  him  at  the  start, 
and  bear  false  witness  against  him  at  the  finish.  Nature 
herself  conspires  against  him  by  concealing  with  infinite 
cunning  that  one  black  blot  in  the  marble,  which  by  and  by, 
on  the  last  lap,  will  present  itself,  inevitable,  indestructible, 
on  some  hero's  sculptured  nose.  The  sculptor's  auxiliary 
forces  —  plaster-molders,  quarrymen,  stone-cutters,  bronze- 
founders  —  are  often  aliens,  with  whom  his  relations  are  not 
always  those  of  perfect  understanding,  either  of  the  spoken 
word,  or  the  written  contract,  or  the  spirit  underlying  each. 
Ward's  patriotism  could  never  accept  with  grace  the  easy 
proverb,  "they  arrange  these  things  better  in  France. "  He 
knew  that  we  ought  to  arrange  them  better  than  we  do,  here 
in  the  United  States.  His  work  with  Brown  had  early 
initiated  him  into  the  mysteries  of  marble-cutting  and 
bronze-casting.  "In  1849,"  writes  Mr.  Bush-Brown,  "my 
uncle  made  a  trip  to  the  frontier,  where  he  made  a  series  of 
drawings,  water-colors,  and  models  of  Indians;  the  Indian 

20 


AN      APPRECIATION 

heads  and  statuettes  were  cast  in  bronze  in  his  Brooklyn 
studio,  by  a  corps  of  Frenchmen  imported  for  the  purpose. " 
These  were  among  the  earliest  bronze  castings  ever  made  in 
this  country.  The  experience  gained  by  Ward  in  his  con- 
tact with  the  French  artisans  was  used  to  advantage  some 
years  later,  when  the  chasers  and  riveters  employed  on  the 
finishing  of  Brown's  famous  bronze  equestrian  statue  of 
Washington  struck  for  higher  wages,  and  were  dismissed. 
Ward  took  up  their  work  where  they  left  it,  and  finished  it 
satisfactorily.  Once  again  the  body  of  a  horse  makes  a 
tradition:  "I  spent  more  days  inside  that  horse  than  Jonah 
did  inside  the  whale, "  says  Ward. 

That  the  sculptor's  auxiliary  forces  do  their  wot-k  as  well 
as  they  do  at  present  is  owing  to  the  influence  of  those  who, 
like  Ward,  are  not  ashamed  to  find  out  with  their  own  hands 
the  limitations  and  possibilities  of  bronze  and  stone.  By  so 
doing,  they  come  into  better  relations  with  the  craftsman; 
they  can  sympathize  with  him  in  his  difficulties,  and  yet 
need  not  be  deceived  by  flimsy  excuses. 

But  Ward's  patriotic  feeling  in  his  art  naturally  extended 
far  beyond  the  matter  of  reproductive  processes.  Like 
Brown,  he  believed  that  American  art  should  treat  of  Amer- 
ican subjects.  His  views  are  clearly  set  forth  in  a  magazine 
article  of  the  late  seventies.  Not  for  him  the  suave  sur- 
roundings of  the  colony  of  expatriates  in  Florence,  nor  the 
relaxing  atmosphere  of  the  Victorian-American-Italian 
school  of  sculpture  at  Rome,  so  marvelously  depicted  in 
Hawthorne's  '* Marble  Faun."  "A  cursed  atmosphere," 
cries  Ward.  "The  magnetism  of  the  antique  statues  is  so 
strong  that  it  draws  a  sculptor's  manhood  out  of  him.  A 
modern  man  has  modern  themes  to  deal  with ;  and  if  art  is  a 
living  thing,  a  serious,  earnest  thing,  fresh  from  a  man's 
soul,  he  must  live  in  that  of  which  he  treats.  .  .  .  An 
American  sculptor  will  serve  himself  and  his  age  best  by 
working  at  home."  He  advised  every  young  artist  to  go 
abroad,  but  not  to  stay  there.     He  had  a  singularly  just 

21 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

appreciation  of  the  modern  French  school.  "Paris  has  the 
best  draughtsmen  in  the  world,"  said  he,  speaking  in  the 
year  1878;  "its  system  of  teaching  is  the  best,  training  the 
eye  to  the  movement  of  figures,  and  to  accuracy  of  repre- 
sentation. "  (It  is  interesting  to  note  that  he  places  "move- 
ment" before  "accuracy.")  Cautioning  the  student  against 
studying  the  cast  so  long  that  "nature  puts  him  out,"  he 
adds,  "  In  sculpture,  no  man  can  ignore  the  grandeur  and  the 
beauty  of  the  antique.  Adhere  to  nature,  by  all  means,  but 
assist  your  intelligence  and  correct  your  taste  by  the  study 
of  the  best  Greek  works.  If  one  is  faithful  and  conscien- 
tious, he  will  find  that  every  good  Greek  work  is  verified  in 
nature.  After  years  of  observation,  I  have  found  things  in 
nature  that  I  once  doubted,  and  the  joy  of  the  discovery  was 
intense."  These  words  show  Ward's  long  acquaintance 
with  all  that  makes  the  happiness  of  the  true  seeker,  and 
interprets  to  us  an  important  side  of  his  character. 

It  was  perhaps  this  lively  sympathy  with  the  true  classic, 
the  spirit  of  Phidias  in  the  Parthenon  pediments,  that  made 
him  so  impatient  of  the  languors  of  the  pseudo-classic;  for 
the  Renaissance  tradition,  fostered  during  the  past  genera- 
tion by  the  academic  teaching  of  France,  and  upheld 
by  the  works  of  Dubois,  Falguiere  and  Mercie,  appealed 
strongly  to  a  certain  side  of  his  nature,  as  did  everything 
stamped  with  the  seal  of  a  vigorous  sincerity.  The  tradition 
which  has  given  us  the  Colleoni  and  the  Gattamelata  could 
never  speak  to  him  in  vain. 

"I  think,"  says  Mr.  French,  "that  Ward's  masculinity 
always  impressed  me  more  than  anything  else  about  the 
physical  man.  His  powerful  build,  his  deep  strong  voice, 
his  forcible  choice  of  words,  his  motions  and  gestures  —  all 
contributed  to  this  impression.  And  this  quality  pervaded 
whatever  he  did.  Incisive  and  straightforward  as  he  was 
—  intolerant  of  sham,  impatient  of  sentimentality  — 
all  this  showed  in  his  work  as  in  his  character  —  natur- 
ally!" 

22 


AN      APPRECIATION 

Yes,  Ward's  artistic  quality  well  deserves  that  word  of 
the  bard, 

"Bring  forth  men-children  only. 
For  thy  undaunted  mettle  should  compose 
Nothing  but  males." 

Male,  in  the  highest  sense,  are  his  most  characteristic 
works  —  the  Washington,  the  Beecher,  the  Garfield,  the 
Shakespeare,  the  Thomas.  And  if  no  one  has  surpassed 
Saint-Gaudens  in  his  presentation  of  the  Angel,  a  being 
beyond  sex,  yet  with  a  strangely  compelling  charm  —  a 
lofty  contemplative  being  from  another  world  —  then  few 
have  equaled  Ward  in  setting  forth  the  Man,  the  virile, 
real,  active  presence  in  the  world  that  lies  about  us. 

Our  country  may  count  herself  happy  in  having  many 
good  solutions  of  that  essentially  virile  problem  in  art,  the 
monumental  equestrian  statue.  Man's  work,  this:  here  lies 
a  field  which  up  to  the  present  has  scarcely  been  entered  by 
women  sculptors,  and  which  will  probably  not  in  the  near 
future  offer  any  very  large  "place  aux  dames. "  The  eques- 
trian problem  was  always  of  passionate  interest  to  Ward, 
and  three  of  the  finest  of  our  equestrians  are  associated  with 
his  genius.  In  the  first  great  example  of  such  work  ever 
produced  in  America,  Brown's  Washington,  Ward  acted  as 
Brown's  assistant;  those  were  the  early  summer  days  of  his 
life,  days  of  the  long  hours  so  mysteriously  shortened  by 
joyful  hard  work.  In  the  General  Hancock,  lately  unveiled, 
Ward  in  his  hale  winter  of  time  was  himself  ably  assisted: 
while  in  the  Thomas,  made  in  his  crowning  middle  years, 
he  dedicates  to  our  art  a  splendid  and  highly  personal 
offering. 

"I  have  thought,"  continues  Mr.  French,  "that  perhaps 
his  most  striking  contribution  to  sculpture  is  the  Thomas 
equestrian,  in  which  he  was  a  pioneer  in  rendering  the  mod- 
ern thoroughbred  horse.     If  to  see  and  interpret  nature 

23 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

freshly  is  at  least  one  of  the  first  attributes  of  the  artist,  he 
won  this  distinction  in  this  statue." 

Ward  thoroughly  loved  and  understood  both  the  horse 
and  the  art  of  riding,  and  was  thus  enabled,  in  this  eques- 
trian portrait,  to  seize  all  the  advantages  offered  by  the 
General's  horse  and  horsemanship.  Together  with  the  large 
monumental  quality  without  which  the  colossal  equestrian 
may  not  well  exist,  the  Thomas  has  an  unusual  expression 
of  race  —  a  free,  high  spirit  due  somewhat  to  the  sculp- 
tor's sensitiveness  to  all  the  fierce  beauty  of  the  war  horse, 
'as  revealed  to  Job.  Some  equestrian  statues  indicate  in  the 
sculptor  a  far  greater  knowledge  of  art  than  of  horseman- 
ship; others  exhibit  the  maker's  understanding  of  the  horse 
rather  than  of  the  principles  of  sculpture.  The  former 
works  may  indeed  be  monumental  in  effect,  but  in  detail, 
they  will  naturally  leave  certain  things  to  your  imagination, 
if  not  to  your  indulgence:  while  the  latter  may  have  a  cer- 
tain originality,  or  a  certain  fine  documentary  significance 
as  to  trappings  and  customs,  but  they  will  belong  to  genre, 
or  to  the  ethnological,  rather  than  to  the  monumental.  The 
Thomas  equestrian  is  easily  in  the  true  equestrian  class. 

In  harmony  with  Ward's  skill  in  riding  was  his  fondness 
for  outdoor  sport.  His  love  of  nature  was  as  deep  as  that  of 
his  friend  and  elder,  the  poet  Bryant,  but,  as  might  be 
inferred  from  his  early  environment  and  active  temperament, 
his  communion  with  nature  was  that  of  the  sportsman  as 
well  as  the  dreamer.  He  was  a  delightful  raconteur  of  his 
vacation  experiences,  whether  in  trout-fishing  near  his  sum- 
mer home  in  the  Catskills,  or  turkey-hunting  in  the  South- 
west. 

A  fine  phase  of  his  masculine  quality  was  shown  in  his 
gentleness  toward  women  and  children.  It  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  with  his  robust  talent,  his  presentation  of  female 
beauty  concerns  itself  with  the  ample  and  vital  and  elemen- 
tal, rather  than  with  the  complex,  the  subtle,  or  the  lure  of 
the  evanescent. 

24 


AN      APPRECIATION 

His  figure  of  Poetry  shows  a  wholesome  creature,  neither 
great  and  wise  and  gnarled  like  the  eldest  of  Michael  An- 
gelo's  sibyls,  nor  yet  with  the  wild  inspired  beauty  of  the 
youngest  of  these.  In  his  acceptance  of  tradition  (and  few 
artists  in  their  work  have  so  well  harmonized  the  tale  of  the 
old  leading  with  that  of  the  new  light),  doubtless  the  Par- 
thenon Athene  has  meant  more  to  him  than  has  the  "  Femme 
Inconnue."  He  was  attracted  by  the  valor  and  the  vigor 
and  the  forthrightness  of  the  many-sided  art  of  the  Itahan 
Renaissance,  rather  than  by  its  subtleties.  He  scarcely 
shares  Leonardo's  passion  for  the  strangenesses  that  are  to 
be  found  in  things.  His  excursions  and  discoveries  and 
inventions  are  all  in  the  broad  field  of  normal  wholesome 
life.  If  his  point  of  view  misses  something  of  the  unusual, 
the  novel,  it  is  because  he  is  frankly  out  of  sympathy  with 
the  abnormal,  the  eccentric.  Had  he  been  painter  instead 
of  sculptor,  his  broad  artistic  sympathy  would  probably  have 
admitted  the  extreme  charm  of  Leonardo's  masterpiece,  but 
his  own  characteristic  gifts  of  expression  would  have  been 
ill-adapted  to  a  four  years'  study  of  La  Gioconda's  smile. 

Since  to-day,  as  always,  feminist  and  hominist  claim  our 
attention,  it  is  worth  while  to  quote  Mr.  Ward's  words  of 
welcome  to  the  women  elected  to  the  Sculpture  Society. 
**We  shall  be  glad  to  meet  you  at  the  council-table  of  this 
Society.  Enter  the  race  asking  no  odds.  Sex  will  not 
handicap  you  if  you  are  true  to  your  own  instincts  and  feel- 
ings. Do  that  which  your  woman's  mind  tells  you  to  do, 
regardless  of  what  any  man  has  done ;  there  may  be  subtle 
phases  of  art  for  you,  too  fine  for  the  coarser  range  of  the 
masculine  sense." 

Compared  with  Mr.  Kipling's  recent  genial  dictum,  this 
counsel  of  Mr.  Ward's  savors  perhaps  of  the  old  school.  His 
speech  had  often  an  old-time  quality  of  which  he  himself,  a 
keen  observer  of  men  and  manners,  was  somehow  oddly 
aware.  I  recall  a  certain  address  in  which,  having  used 
the  old-fashioned  word  "methinks"  as  a  preamble  to  what 

25 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

was  about  to  be  a  well-rounded  period,  he  suddenly  paused; 
glancing  out  on  his  audience  in  an  indescribably  quizzical 
way,  he  said  confidentially,  as  if  he  were  speaking  of  some 
one  else,  "You  know  I  always  say  methinks  when  I  am 
about  to  drop  into  poetry."  And  when  the  hour  for  remem- 
bering former  things  was  upon  him,  his  words  wove  a  spell 
around  his  hearers.  Then  it  was  he  forgot  to  be  the  fighter  of 
shams ;  and  as  one  who  had  known  much,  and  could  therefore 
praise  and  pardon  much,  he  spoke  with  humorous  loving- 
kindness  of  the  greatness  and  the  littleness  he  had  seen 
in  men.  But  if  some  intellectual  combat  were  in  the  air, 
then  the  sinews  of  his  mind  stiffened  and  rejoiced,  and  in  an 
instant  he  was  in  the  midst  of  the  pelt  and  parry.  Swiftly 
he  chose  out  his  good  strong  words,  and  stoutly  he  dealt  his 
blows  with  them.  Mr.  Lorado  Taft  says  that  after  a  talk 
with  Ward,  one  felt  that  the  rest  of  the  world  was  half 
asleep. 


26 


CHAPTER  V 

IN  Ward's  days  of  early  struggle,  he  had  modeled  with 
Cellini-like  distinction  and  charm  many  small  objects 
to  be  cast  in  precious  metal.  Indeed  his  success  in 
this  branch  of  his  art  was  such  that  in  1861,  he  was  en- 
gaged by  the  Ames  Company,  founders  of  Brown's  Wash- 
ington, to  model  exclusively  for  them  designs  for  the  pre- 
sentation swords  then  greatly  in  demand,  as  well  as  for 
canes  and  other  decorative  objects.  Among  his  designs 
were  mountings  for  the  swords  of  Admiral  Foote  and  Gen- 
eral Oglesby.  It  is  said  that  these  particular  mountings 
were  of  solid  gold,  and  cost  about  three  thousand  dollars 
each;  at  that  time,  our  souls  were  comparatively  undis- 
turbed by  longings  for  the  simple  life.  Those  who  have 
judged  Ward's  range  only  through  his  important  monumen- 
tal work  of  later  years  have  been  surprised  by  the  exquisite- 
ness  of  design  and  workmanship  revealed  in  his  modeling  of 
small  objects.  I  recall  a  delightful  little  table-bell  of  silver, 
with  figures  in  high  relief,  a  marvel  of  delicate  beauty.  His 
hand  seemed  as  happy  in  shaping  a  cane-top  for  a  clergy- 
man as  in  designing  pistol-handles  for  a  Sultan. 

Modeling,  pure  and  simple,  he  valued  from  the  sculptor's 
standpoint,  rather  than  from  the  painter's;  temperamen- 
tally, he  was  attracted  to  the  integrity  of  the  solid  and  simple 
treatment  of  the  facts  of  form,  after  the  manner  of  the 
Greeks,  rather    than    to    the    enveloping    charm    of    the 

27 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

so-called  impressionistic  manner.  As  to  the  pictorial  treat- 
ment in  sculpture —  a  matter  which  of  course  has  nothing 
to  do  with  impressionistic  modeling  —  he  was  keenly  alive 
to  its  dangers.  His  love  for  the  true  classic  showed  him  the 
littlenesses  and  incongruities  resulting  from  pictorial  versions 
of  things  to  be  done  in  bronze  and  stone.  And  whether 
because  of  or  in  spite  of  his  profound  feeling  for  Greek  forms, 
he  was  seldom  pleased  with  modern  attempts  in  polychro- 
matic sculpture. 

Throughout  his  career,  beautiful  execution  of  a  "mor- 
ceau, "  deliberately  yet  enthusiastically  studied,  was  quite 
within  the  range  of  his  powers  and  sympathies,  but  was  far 
from  satisfying  the  whole  of  his  desire;  and  it  can  scarcely 
be  imagined  of  him,  as  of  Rodin,  that  he  might  purposely 
create  a  fragment  to  be  valued  for  itself,  as  such,  and  unre- 
lated. A  well-known  American  sculptor,  decidedly  an 
admirer  of  Rodin,  had  long  entertained  a  hope  that  this 
great  French  sculptor  might  complete  something  to  be 
studied,  seen  and  prized  in  connection  with  architecture:  a 
reasonable  hope  indeed,  in  the  interest  of  the  future,  since  it 
is  somewhat  through  the  safe-guarding  strength  of  archi- 
tecture that  much  of  the  sculptured  beauty  of  the  past  has 
been  preserved  to  the  present.  An  inquiry  concerning  this 
was  put  to  Rodin,  and  received  a  fine  evasive  Gallic  reply  to 
the  effect  that  the  human  body  is  the  noblest  type  of  archi- 
tecture. That  is  to  say,  Rodin  is  most  impassioned  for  his 
art  when  it  is  detached  and  set  apart,  presumably  invinci- 
ble in  its  own  beauty  —  an  art  isolated,  even  insulated, 
rather  than  an  art  related  and  united  and  harmonized  with 
another  art.  Certainly,  in  these  days  of  remarkable  achieve- 
ments in  the  dancing  of  a  symphony  and  the  orchestration 
of  a  landscape  —  not  to  speak  of  other  and  less  successful 
attempts  in  the  ultra-correlation  of  the  arts  —  M.  Rodin's 
rigidly  exclusive  point  of  view  about  the  art  of  sculpture 
has  certain  undeniable  merits:  and  somewhere  between 
the   two  extremes  of  the  over-correlated   and   the  wholly 

28 


AN      APPRECIATION 

unrelated  must  lie  the  golden  mean.  With  Ward,  as  with 
the  Greeks,  it  was  a  native  impulse  to  seek  that  mean ;  not 
simply  because  it  seemed  to  him  safe  and  sound,  but  be- 
cause he  found  it  beautiful.  We  are  wont  to  speak  of  the 
middle  course  as  the  safe  one,  but  we  may  be  sure  that  there 
are  adventurous  spirits  who  choose  it  for  some  far  finer  rea- 
son than  because  they  find  that  the  "going  is  good." 

Many  men,  many  minds;  Ward  had  the  mental  habit  of 
considering  things  on  the  side  of  their  largest  relation  — • 
art,  for  instance,  in  its  relation  toward  human  life,  and  an 
individual  work  of  art  in  relation  to  its  environment.  Thus 
the  harmonizing  of  his  sculpture  with  its  surroundings  was 
always  an  object  of  intense  solicitude  with  him.  Con- 
stantly, as  in  the  matter  of  the  Beecher  memorial,  he  urges 
upon  his  clients  the  necessity  of  a  definite  choice  of  a  site, 
before  the  size,  shape,  and  general  treatment  of  a  monu- 
ment can  well  be  determined.  Nor  is  he  willing,  in  such  a 
case  as  that  of  a  pedestal  for  the  Shakespeare  or  the  Gar- 
field, to  bind  himself  with  absolute  rigidity  to  the  lines  of 
any  architectural  drawing,  until  after  he  has  well  worked 
out  the  design  of  the  sculpture  itself;  believing  that  in  such 
instances,  the  architecture  should  be  to  the  sculpture  what 
the  fine  frame  is  to  the  picture,  the  beautiful  unique  binding 
to  the  book.  His  many  important  works  naturally  imply 
the  collaboration  of  many  famous  architects  of  widely 
differing  schools;  with  the  noble  designs  of  Richard  Morris 
Hunt  he  seems  to  have  had  a  special  sympathy. 

Almost  more  than  any  other  American  sculptor,  Ward 
had  by  nature  what  Pater  has  called  the  "architectural  con- 
ception of  work":  yet  it  was  not  his  destiny  to  reveal  to  us, 
through  collaboration  with  an  architect,  the  peculiar  har- 
mony and  beauty  and  novelty  of  design  which  we  now  know 
may  be  attained  in  the  union  of  sculpture  and  architecture. 
It  was  reserved  for  the  combined  genius  of  Saint-Gaudens 
and  White  to  blaze  the  path  in  this  direction.  When  we 
remember  that  Ward  was  born  in  1830,  the  very  year  in 

29 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

which  Charles  Bulfinch,  our  first  American  architect,  fin- 
ished his  work  on  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  we  realize  that 
it  would  have  been  more  than  a  miracle  had  this  sculptor's 
time  and  place  in  American  art  permitted  him  to  take  a 
prominent  part  in  any  such  movement  toward  the  harmon- 
izing of  sculpture  and  architecture,  as  that  which  may  be 
said  to  have  begun  with  the  Farragut  monument.  Saint- 
Gaudens  was  born  eighteen  years  later  than  Ward,  and 
White  and  McKim,  the  two  great  architects  who  were  his 
comrades,  were  the  first  to  give  serious  thought  to  creating 
a  new  tradition  in  the  ancient  art  of  framing  sculpture.  It 
would  have  been  chronologically  impossible  for  Ward  to 
have  introduced  new  departures  in  this  matter;  the  archi- 
tects who  were  his  contemporaries  were  properly  busy  in 
larger  affairs:  construction  properly  had  precedence  over 
decoration.  But  the  Farragut  monument,  unveiled  in  1881, 
revealed  to  the  world  old  truths  in  new  guise;  the  message 
was  told  not  only  by  the  statue  itself,  but  by  its  architec- 
tural setting.  We  are  far  from  accepting  the  gloomy  state- 
ment of  the  French  critic  who  declares  that  the  Farragut 
pedestal,  with  its  "winds  and  waves  and  wild  uproar"  dom- 
inated and  calmed  by  the  figure  of  the  sea-king  above  it,  is 
the  real  fount  and  origin  of  the  whole  Art  Nouveau  move- 
ment :  yet  the  fact  that  such  a  statement  has  been  made  by  a 
Frenchman  shows  the  importance  of  this  new  example  in  the 
setting  of  sculpture.  And  from  that  day  to  this,  a  more 
serious  consideration  of  the  subject  has  prevailed.  An  un- 
interesting or  unsympathetic  pedestal  may  work  wonders 
to  the  discredit  of  a  statue.  Though  Ward  had  a  true  feel- 
ing for  architecture,  many  of  his  earlier  works  are  seen  under 
all  the  disadvantages  that  the  architecture  of  their  day  could 
afford.  The  world  at  large  will  never  know  how  nobly  he 
struggled  against  these  disadvantages:  his  private  corre- 
spondence reveals  the  extent  of  his  dissatisfaction  with  the 
conditions,  and  his  efforts  to  improve  them. 

It  may  here  be  recalled  that  when  the  Farragut  monu- 

30 


AN      APPRECIATION 

ment  was  first  projected,  some  of  the  committee  wished  to 
have  Mr.  Ward  as  the  sculptor,  while  others  preferred  Mr. 
Saint-Gaudens,  then  at  the  beginning  of  his  career.  Mr. 
Ward,  with  characteristic  largeness  of  mind,  helped  to  solve 
the  difficulty  by  saying,  "  Give  the  young  man  a  chance. " 
He  believed  in  the  younger  blood;  no  petty  considerations 
prevented  him  from  recognizing  its  value.  In  the  art  organ- 
izations in  which  he  had  influence,  his  spirit  was  inclusive 
rather  than  exclusive.  He  held  that  the  newer  men  would 
prompt  their  elders  to  more  decisive  and  efficient  action. 


31 


M 


CHAPTER  VI 

"ANY  cities  in  the  New  England,  Middle,  and  South- 
ern states  possess  examples  of  Ward's  sculpture. 
He  is  represented  as  far  north  as  Vermont,  and  as 
far  south  as  South  Carolina.  A  particularly  interesting 
statue  is  the  Lafayette,  a  heroic  bronze  figure  erected  in 
Burlington  in  1883,  and  showing  the  General  as  he  might 
have  appeared  at  the  time  of  his  second  visit  to  this  country ; 
a  sort  of  middle-aged  modified  Incroyable  brimming  with 
vitality.  Boston  has  the  Good  Samaritan,  a  group  in  gran- 
ite, commemorating  the  discovery  of  ether  as  an  anesthetic 
—  one  of  Ward's  earlier  works,  having  been  placed  in  the 
Public  Garden  in  1868.  Of  the  same  date  is  Newport's 
statue  of  Commodore  Perry,  who  in  1854,  secured  the 
famous  commercial  treaty  with  Japan.  Hartford  has  its 
bronze  statue  of  Israel  Putnam,  erected  in  1874,  and  Gettys- 
burg its  bronze  statue  of  General  Reynolds,  completed  in 
1872.  In  Spartanburg,  South  Carohna,  is  the  bronze  fig- 
ure of  the  gallant  Revolutionary  General  Morgan,  who 
defeated  Tarleton  in  the  fight  at  nearby  Cowpens.  Its  date 
is  1881;  two  years  earlier,  in  Charleston,  was  erected  the 
bronze  statue  of  William  Gilmore  Simms,  who  as  historian 
of  South  Carolina  had  related  the  deeds  of  Morgan.  From 
North  to  South,  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  these  figures 
tell  our  country's  history. 

But  among  all  our  cities.  New  York  and  Washington 

32 


AN      APPRECIATION 

have  naturally  the  lion's  share  of  Mr.  Ward's  work.  In 
New  York's  Central  Park  are  four  important  bronzes  from 
his  hand:  the  Indian  Hunter,  completed  in  1864,  an  achieve- 
ment as  American  as  possible  in  subject,  in  artist,  and  in  the 
influences  under  which  it  was  shaped;  the  Shakespeare, 
placed  in  1872,  a  characteristic  work  in  what  may  be  called 
Ward's  matured  style,  and  created  in  all  those  genial  cir- 
cumstances of  assured  public  appreciation  and  of  valued 
personal  friendships  with  men  who  were  thinking  and  doing 
the  significant  things  of  the  day;  the  Seventh  Regiment 
Soldier,  unveiled  the  following  year;  and  the  Pilgrim,  erected 
in  1885  by  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York.  Each 
of  these  statues  has  a  theme  definitely  suggested  by  our 
national  history.  The  first  commemorates  the  vanished 
inhabitant,  the  last  the  conquering  pioneer,  in  his  less  harsh 
aspect;  the  second  honors  an  intellectual  influence  from  the 
mother  country,  and  the  third,  the  Republic's  defender. 

Aside  from  its  great  natural  beauty.  New  York's  Central 
Park  is  noted  as  being  in  point  of  time  the  first  large  munici- 
pal pleasure  ground  laid  out  in  the  United  States.  The 
year  was  1857;  and  during  the  first  quarter-century  of  the 
Park's  existence,  the  so-called  Victorian  canons  of  taste  pre- 
vailed among  English-speaking  peoples.  Why  should  we 
wonder  that  there  is  so  much  commonplace  sculpture  in  the 
Park?  On  the  contrary,  we  may  well  be  surprised  and 
grateful  that  there  is  so  much  that  is  really  good.  Ward 
gallantly  did  his  part  to  raise  the  average.  In  the  sixties 
and  seventies,  his  Indian  Hunter  and  his  Shakespeare  set  a 
notably  high  standard.  The  fact  that  other  sculptors  com- 
ing soon  after  were  not  able  to  reach  this  standard  is  easily 
seen  from  the  two  huge  uncouth  sculptures  that  flank  the 
south  end  of  the  Mall.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
"Scott"  and  the  "Halleck"  were  placed  in  the  Park  at  a 
later  date  than  the  two  works  of  Ward,  not  far  away. 
Neither  the  Hunter  nor  the  Shakespeare  is  enhanced  by  its 
pedestal ;  but  the  Hunter  has  the  advantage  of  a  wonderfully 

33 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

harmonious  natural  setting,  the  httle  clearing  and  the  droop- 
ing branches  making  an  ideal  background  for  the  stealthy 
stride  of  the  man,  and  the  quivering  eagerness  of  the  dog. 
As  to  the  Soldier  on  Guard,  one  of  the  most  honored  of  our 
modern  sculptors,  speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  one  who 
values  both  sincerity  of  feeling  and  competence  in  expression, 
has  said  that  this  work  is  by  no  means  properly  appreciated 
by  the  public,  because  we  have  had  a  surfeit  of  soldiers'  mon- 
uments; and  the  vexed  question  of  the  "high  pedestal"  also 
enters  here. 

It  is  natural  and  perhaps  even  worth  while  to  observe 
that  Ward's  Pilgrim,  the  latest  of  his  Central  Park  statues, 
is  dated  1884,  two  years  earlier  than  the  Saint-Gaudens 
Puritan  at  Springfield.  Plaster  casts  of  both  these  figures 
stand  near  each  other  in  the  Chicago  Art  Institute;  com- 
parison there  is  interesting,  though  necessarily  incomplete. 
How  differently  these  two  men  of  genius  have  solved  the 
problem!  "The  old  Greeks,"  says  Lorado  Taft,  in  writing 
of  the  Saint-Gaudens  Puritan,  "took  men  and  made  from 
them  noble  abstractions;  the  modern  man  poses  an  abstrac- 
tion, and  develops  it  into  a  living  man.  At  least  such  is  the 
gift  of  Saint-Gaudens. " 

Ward  too  in  his  Pilgrim  has  given  an  abstract  idea  con- 
crete form.  Possibly  he  has  approached  his  subject  with 
the  deeper  reverence,  while  Saint-Gaudens  has  touched  it 
with  a  more  playful  philosophy.  Both  sculptors  are  men 
with  a  keen  sense  of  humor;  Ward's  hand  is  perhaps  stayed 
by  a  certain  feeling  very  like  ancestor  worship;  his  Pilgrim 
might  be  first  cousin  to  his  own  forefather  from  Norfolk. 
The  more  complex  temperament  of  Saint-Gaudens  views 
the  case  with  greater  detachment;  the  bones  of  his  ances- 
tors are  not  in  question,  and  no  consciousness  of  blood- 
relationship  to  his  subject  prevents  him  from  adding  to  his 
masterly  characterization  of  it  an  infinitely  delightful  touch 
of  sportive  malice.  His  Puritan  is  a  man  who  makes  a  grim 
stir,  I  warrant  you,  when  he  walks  abroad !     Woe  betide  the 

34 


AN      APPRECIATION 

culprit  urchin  caught  in  any  prank  of  lese  majeste  toward 
that  reverend  presence!  Saint-Gaudens's  conception  of  the 
**part,"  while  in  itself  synthetic,  interesting,  unique,  and  in 
no  wise  injured  by  its  interwoven  thread  of  friendly  satire,  is 
nevertheless  one  that  in  the  hands  of  a  less  gifted  artist 
would  lend  itself  to  caricature  rather  than  to  truthful  pre- 
sentment. The  result  is  inimitable,  but  many  will  attempt 
imitation,  and  be  lost. 

Ward  in  his  treatment  of  the  theme  purposely  avoids 
insistence  upon  the  more  grewsome  elements  of  our  early 
colonial  life  —  elements  which  by  reason  of  their  highly 
dramatic  quality,  have  already  been  over-emphasized  in  our 
literature,  and  have  thus  been  deprived  of  their  proper  per- 
spective. When  we  recall  the  verdict  of  history  that  no- 
where else  in  what  was  called  the  civilized  world  did  the 
horrible  delusion  of  witchcraft  play  so  little  part  as  in  the 
American  colonies,  executions  for  witchcraft  having  been 
discontinued  in  New  England  half  a  century  earlier  than  in 
Europe,  we  must  admit  that  from  the  historical  point  of 
view.  Ward  is  justified  in  his  rejection  of  certain  temptingly 
picturesque  phases  of  the  New  England  character  —  its 
grim  self-repression,  its  pitiless  exclusion,  its  frenzied  intol- 
erance. Such  elements  Ward  has  regarded  as  episodic,  not 
fundamental.  He  has  remembered  too  that  although  the 
conditions  of  our  early  colonial  life  were  hard,  they  were  on 
the  whole  rather  to  be  chosen  than  those  which  had  been 
left  behind  in  the  mother  country:  the  cheapness  of  land 
lessened  class  distinctions;  the  rich  were  not  so  rich  and  the 
poor  not  so  poor  as  in  England.  His  conception  of  the 
Pilgrim,  therefore,  is  that  of  the  grave,  upright,  fearless 
but  by  no  means  implacable  pioneer  —  a  stern  man,  it  may 
be,  but  certainly  not  a  sour  one  —  a  man  equally  ready  to 
live  by  the  plough  or  by  the  musket,  and  to  die  in  his  bed  or 
in  his  boots,  as  the  Lord  should  will.  In  a  sense,  it  is  like 
the  Greek  conception  in  art,  no  particular  stress  being  laid 
on  any  particular  characteristic.     The  Pilgrim,  work  of  a 

35 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

home-trained  sculptor,  is  an  excellent  example  of  sterling 
academic  compostion,  such  as  has  long  been  taught  in  the 
French  schools;  the  Puritan,  produced  by  an  artist  edu- 
cated largely  under  the  conventional  foreign  influences, 
transcends  tradition :  it  strikes  a  note  of  novelty  which  to  the 
imitator  is  the  siren's  song  luring  him  to  disaster. 

Another  interesting  anomaly  is  that  Ward  in  represent- 
ing his  Pilgrim,  a  wayfarer  who  has  crossed  an  ocean  in 
search  of  an  ideal,  has  seized  him  at  a  moment  of  repose  — 
ready  for  action,  but  not  in  action ;  whereas  Saint-Gaudens, 
depicting  a  Puritan,  a  man  who  puts  his  foot  down  and 
keeps  it  there,  has  elected  to  set  him  traveling,  staff  in  hand, 
the  Word  of  God  caught  up  weightily  under  his  arm,  and  his 
great  cloak  displacing  much  air.  But  Ward's  Pilgrim, 
though  in  repose,  is  on  guard.  This  fact  is  told  quite  as 
much  by  the  high  resolution  of  his  bearing  as  by  the  musket 
on  which  he  rests  his  hand,  and  the  powder-horn  and  car- 
tridge-cases slung  across  his  stout  leathern  jerkin.  Every 
line  of  him,  from  the  peak  of  his  high-crowned,  broad- 
brimmed  hat  to  the  soles  of  his  wide-flapped,  square-toed 
boots,  shows  that  he  is  not  a  person  to  be  put  upon  by  the 
fist  of  man  or  fate.  His  grave  eyes,  his  firm  lips,  his  lightly 
clenched  hand  all  inform  you  that  he  is  not  spoiling  for  a 
fight,  but  is  ready  for  one,  if  need  be. 

The  Pilgrim  has  a  full  measure  of  that  look  which  critics 
have  found  characteristic  of  Ward's  statues  —  a  look  which 
says  with  the  County  Palatine,  "If  you  will  not  have  me, 
choose. "  In  this.  Ward  has  expressed  something  of  his  own 
conviction  as  an  artist  —  his  sense  of  the  dignity  of  his 
calling,  and  of  the  eternal  sacredness  of  a  man's  best.  This 
serene  "take  me  or  leave  me"  of  the  Pilgrim  is  a  triple  mes- 
sage to  us;  it  is  from  the  subject  as  well  as  from  the  statue, 
and  from  the  sculptor  more  than  from  either.  Its  language 
is  that  of  deep  conviction,  not  of  shallow  conceit;  it  speaks 
Ward's  own  emotions  as  a  creator  conscious  of  power. 

Criticism  of  the  sort  that  loves  the  high  and  dry  distinc- 

36 


AN      APPRECIATION 

tions  of  label  and  pigeon-hole  will  call  Ward's  work  realistic 
rather  than  idealistic,  objective  rather  than  subjective,  and 
will  assume  that  both  his  merits  and  defects  result  from  the 
qualities  thus  assigned.  But  luckily,  the  artistic  achieve- 
ment of  most  men  strays  at  times  from  the  pigeon-hole. 
Often  the  critic  has  all  too  rashly  gone  a-gumming:  he  has 
no  sooner  caught  his  specimen,  and  marked  it  realist  or 
idealist,  as  the  case  may  be,  than  lo  and  behold,  he  has  his 
labor  for  his  pains.  The  magic  of  opportunity  has  com- 
pletely transformed  something  in  the  artist's  nature,  and 
gives  the  lie  to  the  label.  Ward  passionately  loved  the 
facts  of  form;  he  revered  them  and  he  gloried  in  them.  Yet 
he  often  regretted  that  the  public's  desire  to  immortalize 
its  heroes  by  means  of  portraiture  left  him  little  opportunity 
for  ideal  sculpture.  Had  his  time  been  but  twenty  years 
later,  he  would  have  witnessed  the  later  stages  of  a  slow  but 
certain  change  in  this  respect.  The  need  of  the  portrait 
continues,  but  with  it  is  everywhere  an  ever-increasing 
interest  in  "small  bronzes,"  frequently  of  ideal  subjects; 
an  interest  to  which  he  himself  has  largely  contributed, 
through  his  endeavors  to  improve  in  this  country  the 
process  of  bronze  casting. 

Probably  the  greatest  of  his  statues  are  those  in  which  he 
shows  himself  both  realist  and  idealist;  and  of  these,  his 
Washington  in  front  of  the  Sub-Treasury  is  a  noble  instance. 
On  our  way  from  the  Park  to  Wall  Street,  we  note  in  passing, 
that  Herald  Square  has  its  statue  of  William  E.  Dodge, 
erected  by  the  New  York  Chamber  of  Commerce  in  1885. 
If  the  voice  of  prophecy  be  here  permitted,  the  time  will 
come  when  this  very  able  work  will  receive  its  due  meed  of 
public  appreciation,  and  v/hen  it  will  be  properly  and 
sharply  differentiated  from  certain  of  our  monuments  with 
which  it  is  now  wrongly  classed  by  the  flippant  unobserver. 
Printing  House  Square  has  its  seated  figure  of  Horace 
Greeley,  completed  in  1890,  a  commission  from  the  Tribune 
Association.     Socrates  is  not  the  unique  human  example  of 

37 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

spiritual  greatness  in  homely  guise;  and  it  will  be  admitted 
that  our  American  sage  and  journalist,  like  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries, offered  a  sculptural  problem  made  unusually 
difficult  by  mere  externals.  So,  too,  a  background  of  plate 
glass  is  a  perplexing  matter.  But  Ward,  in  his  quality  of 
true  artist,  has  transmuted  conditions  into  opportunities: 
his  fme  honesty  has  extenuated  nothing;  he  has  shown  the 
outer  man  whom  the  world  saw,  but  he  has  been  able  to 
know  and  reveal  the  hero  behind  the  whiskers;  and  without 
benefit  of  silhouette,  he  has  given  us  a  compelling  figure,  a 
triumph  in  sculptured  characterization. 

Half-way  up  the  broad  steps  of  the  Sub-Treasury  build- 
ing, in  Wall  Street,  is  the  beautiful  and  impressive  Washing- 
ton, a  standing  figure  in  which  Ward's  qualities  of  correct- 
ness, dignity  and  simplicity  are  seen  at  their  very  best,  and 
in  absolute  harmony  with  the  subject  treated.  This  statue 
is  placed  near  the  spot  where  our  first  President  was  inau- 
gurated in  1789.  Washington  is  about  to  take  the  oath  of 
office;  the  right  hand  is  extended  in  a  gesture  of  deep,  yet 
restrained  feeling;  a  cloak  at  the  back  gives  by  its  harmoni- 
ous envelopment  a  fine  amplitude  to  the  composition,  and 
prevents  that  suggestion  of  silhouetted  silk-stocking  dapper- 
ness  which  in  sculpture  is  one  of  the  pitfalls  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  costume  —  a  form  of  dress  inherently  picturesque 
rather  than  sculpturesque.  The  many-statued  Father  of 
His  Country  has  often  lent  himself  to  some  such  innocent 
ruse:  Houdon,  it  will  be  remembered,  placed  a  plow  at  the 
great  man's  heels,  and  even  then  Jefferson  complained  of  the 
"puny  effect  of  our  boots  and  regimentals."  As  an  exam- 
ple of  change,  or  progress,  if  you  will,  in  our  ideals,  it  is 
interesting  to  compare  this  Washington  of  Ward's,  dated 
1883,  with  Greenough's  well-known  statue  of  Washington  as 
the  Olympian  Zeus,  conceived  in  the  full  tide  of  neo-classi- 
cism.  Greenough  was  our  first  American  sculptor;  and  as 
there  is  nothing  which  so  completely  obscures  real  merit  as 
unfashionableness   not  yet   promoted   to   antiquity,    it   is 

38 


AN      APPRECIATION 

difficult  for  the  present  generation  to  understand  how  good 
a  work  his  Washington  really  is;  in  these  days,  we  feel  un- 
comfortable in  the  presence  of  a  Washington  whose  chest  is 
exposed,  and  the  Greenough  "semi-drapery"  leaves  us  and 
the  wearer  cold.  Even  when  first  seen,  the  statue  was  the 
cause  of  some  disappointment;  the  controversy  between 
"classick  stile"  and  "modern  ideas"  was  then  in  its  begin- 
nings. Bulfmch,  the  architect,  a  man  of  taste  and  culture, 
writes  in  1841,  "I  send  you  a  sort  of  defence  of  this  statue 
from  Everett,  but  am  not  convinced  that  the  sculpture  is 
suited  for  modern  subjects;  the  dress  presents  insuperable 
difficulties.  The  first  statue  of  Washington  was  made  by 
Houdon,  and  a  more  unpleasant  figure  was  never  seen.  It 
is  represented  in  an  old-fashioned  coat  etc.  with  hair  dressed 
as  he  wore  it,  but  far  from  picturesque  with  stiff  ear  curls 
and  a  heavy  club  behind.  The  next  statue  was  by  Chan- 
trey,  in  our  State  house,  cloathed  as  a  Roman  senator;  it  was 
highly  commended  at  first,  but  is  now  seen  with  perfect 
indifference." 

It  would  seem  from  this  extract  that  neither  the  modern 
nor  the  classic  had  at  that  time  really  gained  the  day.  The 
pendulum  was  still  swinging.  Bulfinch  protests  equally 
against  Houdon's  realism  and  Ghantrey's  classicism.  But 
a  statue  does  not  live  and  die  by  costume  alone ;  it  is  not  for 
clothes'  sake  that  a  work  of  art  is  accepted  or  rejected  by 
the  world.  Ward's  Washington,  by  many  sculptors  ac- 
counted his  noblest  portrait  statue,  will  live  because  Ward 
had  great  thoughts  about  a  great  man,  and  because  he  had 
also  the  genius  and  skill  to  present  those  thoughts  greatly 
and  simply.  Yet  who  shall  say  what  shall  live?  Sculpture, 
like  other  work,  accepts  its  risk  of  being  seen  in  the  future' 
with  that  "perfect  indifference"  which  sometimes  follows 
"high  commendation."  And  if  anything  can  insure  the 
artist's  work  against  oblivion,  it  is  that  large  interest,  at 
once  human  and  heroic,  which  pervades  and  vitalizes  Ward's 
Washington. 

39 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

One  of  our  critics,  in  expressing  a  faint  wish  that  the 
weight  of  the  figure  had  been  planted  more  squarely  on  both 
feet,  notes  the  possibility  that  the  sculptor  has  purposely 
avoided  the  square  placing,  in  order  to  convey  the  idea  that 
not  ambition,  but  duty,  deliberately  considered,  has  called 
Washington  to  his  high  position.  For  myself,  speaking 
humbly  not  as  a  critic  but  as  a  mere  lover  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  fitting,  I  take  such  pleasure  in  the  whole  harmony 
of  the  design  that  I  find  not  a  line  nor  a  plane  nor  an  accent 
nor  a  gesture  that  I  would  wish  to  see  changed.  The  ideas 
suggested  are  those  of  consecration  and  calm  and  power; 
and  the  rendering  of  these  ideas  has  been  accomplished  with 
a  perfection  that  is  no  mere  negative  attribute.  Set  in  the 
midst  of  the  strain  and  struggle  of  the  business  life  of  our 
greatest  city,  the  figure  maintains  a  splendid  national  sig- 
nificance. Its  largeness  of  style  is  in  faultless  harmony 
with  the  classic  lines  of  the  building  in  front  of  which  it 
stands  and  the  pedestal  on  which  it  rests.  Leaving  eques- 
trian statues  out  of  consideration,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  in  the  long  line  of  our  portrait  statues  of  Washington 
—  works  in  which  sculptors  of  at  least  four  countries  have 
expressed  themselves  —  the  Washington  of  the  Sub-Treas- 
ury remains  the  fitting  type  and  exemplar. 

Not  far  from  this  stately  figure  is  yet  another  important 
work  of  Ward's,  the  marble  tympanum  of  the  New  Stock 
Exchange.  From  the  nature  of  its  position  on  a  building 
in  a  narrow  street,  it  is  not  seen  at  an  advantage,  unless  the 
spectator  views  it  from  the  Sub-Treasury  steps;  in  fact, 
Washington  himself  has  an  excellent  opportunity  to  study  it. 
Its  subject,  Integrity  Protecting  the  Works  of  Man,  is  not 
unsuited  to  classical  treatment.  In  this  pediment  is  shown 
to  an  unusual  degree  Ward's  austere  "architectural  con- 
ception of  work,  which  foresees  the  end  in  the  beginning, 
and  never  loses  sight  of  it,  and  in  every  part  of  it  is  con- 
scious of  all  the  rest."  In  the  center  stands  Integrity, 
arms  outstretched,  two  genii  at  her  feet;  on  each  side  are 

40 


AN      APPRECIATION 

four  figures,  some  nude,  some  draped ;  the  poses  are  varied, 
two  of  the  figures  being  grouped  lengthwise  to  fill  that  ever 
difficult  acute  angle  at  the  base  of  the  pediment  (too  often 
an  impasse  that  blocks  the  artist's  good  intention  as  to 
arrangement),  and  the  other  two  being  so  composed  as  to 
connect  the  corner  groups  with  the  central  idea.  The  pedi- 
ment problem,  whether  to  be  solved  in  the  large  style  suited 
to  the  Parthenon,  or  in  the  joyous  vein  of  Carpeaux's  Flora, 
is  always  a  sufficiently  baffling  proposition;  here,  a  gravely 
classical  spirit,  descended  from  the  Acropolis  rather  than 
from  the  Forum  or  from  the  Louvre,  broods  over  this  bal- 
anced, well  filled,  but  not  intricate  composition  of  forms 
practically  in  the  round. 

To  prove  that  the  art  of  sculpture  is  duly  honored  in  the 
shadow  of  old  Trinity  and  in  the  heart  of  New  York's  busi- 
ness world,  yet  another  work  of  Ward's  might,  until  very 
recently,  have  been  found  within  one  of  the  famous  build- 
ings of  a  famous  spot.  By  some  miracle,  the  fire  that  lately 
destroyed  the  Equitable  Building  has  left  intact  our  sculp- 
tor's statue  of  Henry  B.  Hyde,  formerly  standing  in  the 
arcade  of  that  building. 

Across  the  Bridge,  Brooklyn  has  her  beloved  Beecher 
monument,  erected  in  1891,  called  by  many  critics  Ward's 
masterpiece,  and  certainly  a  popular  work.  Though  Ward 
had  a  strong  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  the  artist's  mission, 
and  believed  that  the  artist  should  be  "un  etre  d'elite, "  he 
loved  not,  in  a  work  of  art,  that  kind  of  distinction  which 
leaves  its  message  unintelligible  to  the  mass  of  the  people. 
"A  true  work  of  art,"  he  declared,  "will  meet  the  wants 
and  therefore  stir  the  feelings  of  the  ordinary  human  heart." 
In  the  Beecher,  as  in  the  Garfield  monument  in  Washing- 
ton, he  has  used  the  opportunity  to  surround  his  important 
central  figure  (necessarily  a  portrait,  and  therefore  governed 
by  certain  well  defined  rules),  with  supplementary  figures 
lending  themselves  to  a  freer  and  more  idealistic  treatment 
than  the  laws  of  portraiture  allow.     The  negro  girl  busy 

41 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

with  her  palm  branch  and  the  two  children  with  their  oak 
garland  count  largely  in  the  lyric  appeal  of  the  whole  work. 

Epic  rather  than  lyric  is  the  impressive  Garfield  monu- 
ment erected  in  Washington  in  1887  by  the  Society  of  the 
Army  of  the  Cumberland.  A  colossal  bronze  statue  of 
Garfield  surmounts  a  circular  granite  pedestal  designed  by 
Hunt,  the  architecture  affording  spaces  for  three  heroic 
reclining  figures  in  bronze  —  the  Student,  the  Warrior,  the 
Statesman  —  symbolizing  three  important  phases  in  Gar- 
field's life.  Of  the  portrait  statue  itself,  W^ard  writes,  "It 
was  the  general  desire  of  those  interested  in  the  work  that  I 
should  represent  Garfield  in  the  act  of  speaking.  This  I 
have  endeavored  to  do,  or  rather,  to  represent  him  at  the 
close  of  a  period,  while  delivering  a  speech.  From  personal 
observation  and  from  information,  I  have  chosen  one  of  his 
characteristic  attitudes  and  gestures.  There  has  been  no 
attempt  to  represent  any  particular  incident  or  moment  in 
his  oratorical  career,  but  the  statue  is  meant  to  broadly 
suggest  to  each  spectator  such  interpretation  as  his  memory 
or  imagination  may  allow." 

As  has  already  been  seen.  Ward's  aim  in  a  portrait  statue 
is  to  express  with  dignity  and  conviction  both  the  personal 
characteristics  and  the  historical  significance  of  his  subject. 
He  does  not  wish  to  leave  out  the  human  interest,  but,  as 
many  of  his  letters  to  his  patrons  show,  he  prefers  to  avoid 
anecdote,  or  at  least  to  leave  the  onus  of  it  to  the  accessory 
portions  of  the  monument,  whether  figures  or  reliefs.  In 
comparing  the  Beecher  with  the  Garfield,  one  immediately 
perceives  that,  to  suit  his  theme,  the  artist  has  changed, 
quite  naturally,  the  scale  of  his  thought,  if  the  expres- 
sion may  be  permitted.  In  the  monument  to  the  popular 
preacher,  both  as  to  the  bronze  figures  and  their  stone  set- 
ting, all  is  human,  intimate,  close  to  the  ground  and  to  the 
daily  struggles  of  life;  in  the  memorial  to  the  martyred 
President,  sculpture  and  architecture  are  carried  into  the 
realm   of  the   universal  rather  than  of  the  intimate  and 

42 


AN      APPRECIATION 

personal ;  the  historical  background  is  properly  broader  and 
more  important.  The  Garfield  monument  may  be  said  to 
be  conceived  in  the  classic  spirit;  yet  in  its  own  way,  as  the 
Thomas  equestrian  in  its  very  different  way,  it  gave  Ward 
a  fine  opportunity  for  virile  poetic  characterization  in  por- 
traiture. For  Ward,  like  Abou  Ben  Adhem,  must  be  writ- 
ten as  one  who  loved  his  fellow-men.  And  he  loved  to  look 
upon  the  outer  sheath  of  a  man,  and  by  his  art,  to  divine 
and  declare  truly  the  mystery  of  the  being  that  was  hidden 
within.  Garfield's  good  looks  made  him  a  difficult  subject 
for  modern  portraiture.  We  are  not  like  the  Greeks;  we 
value  individuality  above  beauty.  To  the  American  sculp- 
tor as  to  his  public,  the  splendid  3^et  homely  character  of  a 
gnarled  form  like  Lincoln's,  or  a  leonine  head  like  Beecher's 
makes  an  appeal  far  beyond  that  of  personal  comeliness. 

Hawthorne  found  it  singular  that  Americans,  with  all 
their  love  of  change,  should  care  to  perpetuate  themselves 
in  the  indestructible  likeness  of  a  marble  or  bronze  bust; 
but  the  fashion  has  persisted,  and  Ward,  as  may  be  seen 
from  the  list  of  his  works  here  given,  made  many  portrait 
busts  of  people  of  importance.  Notable  among  his  later 
productions  in  this  branch  of  his  art  is  the  bronze  portrait 
bust  of  Alexander  Lyman  Holley,  with  its  fine  architectural 
setting  by  Thomas  Hastings.  This  work  is  made  further 
interesting  by  the  vivid  personality  of  its  subject,  a  wonder- 
worker of  the  steel  industry,  its  donors,  the  "engineers  of 
two  hemispheres,"  and  by  its  situation  in  Washington 
Square,  a  beautiful  breathing-space  where  swarms  of  humble 
alien  workers  now  make  holiday  against  a  background  of  old 
New  York's  aristocratic  memories.  The  bust  of  Holley, 
erected  in  the  Square  in  1890,  may  be  said  to  second,  in 
some  sort,  the  emphatic  protest  which  the  Washington  Arch 
with  its  dignified  sculptures  eloquently  utters  against  the 
triviality  of  the  Garibaldi  statue  hard  by.  Ward  did  not 
scorn  the  voice  of  the  people,  especially  the  American 
people,  but  his  vigorous  mind  was  impatient  of  the  namby- 

43 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

pamby  and  the  unconstructed  —  as  well  as  of  any  work,  no 
matter  how  well  constructed,  if  conceived  in  the  style  stig- 
matized by  the  student  as  "pompier."  In  his  portrait 
busts,  as  in  his  statues  and  monuments,  a  virile  simplicity 
prevails. 


44 


CHAPTER  VII 

WARD'S  labors  brought  him  honor  and  what  may 
even  be  accounted  wealth,  if  judged  by  normal 
standards.  It  would  be  idle  to  say  of  any  artist 
that  everything  he  has  touched  is  a  masterpiece ;  but  certainly 
nothing  that  Ward  produced  could  ever  be  called  a  pot-boiler, 
if  by  this  term  we  mean  a  work  undertaken  for  revenue  only, 
and  not  from  conviction  and  with  conscience.  Some  artists 
defend  such  products  on  the  high  ground  that  they  need  the 
money  to  do  justice  to  other  artistic  enterprises  of  higher  im- 
port to  the  world.  But  defensible  or  indefensible,  the  pot- 
boiler does  not  figure  in  the  tale  of  John  Quincy  Adams  Ward's 
commissions.  The  list  of  works  here  given  was  revised  by 
the  sculptor  shortly  before  his  death,  and  was  published  in 
William  Walton's  article  upon  Ward  in  the  International 
Studio  for  June,  1910.  Naturally,  such  a  list  is  scarcely 
complete;  few  artists  can  recite  without  omission  the 
story  of  their  fifty  years  of  work. 

Surely  Sir  Christopher  Wren's  epitaph,  that  fortunate 
line  of  Latin  freely  lending  itself  to  the  fame  of  many  an 
artist-builder,  be  he  sculptor  or  architect,  and  lately  asso- 
ciated with  the  memory  of  McKim,  may  here  once  more  be 
remembered.  If  we  seek  Ward's  monument,  we  may  well 
look  around  us.  But  the  real  essence  of  any  man's  living 
quality  as  an  artist  is  something  which  forever  eludes 
present-day  analysis.     Each  great  artist  stands,  a  world- 

45 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

candidate  for  that  gift  of  immortality  which,  when  all's 
done,  the  voices  of  contemporary  criticism  can  neither 
bestow  nor  withhold.  By  a  rude  arithmetical  sort  of  judg- 
ment, we  may  indeed  say  that  a  man's  work  is  of  value  in 
the  world,  according  to  the  sum  of  what  he  has  put  into  it 
—  his  gifts  and  his  use  of  them.  In  the  large  volume  of 
Ward's  work,  the  first  important  chapter  is  the  Indian 
Hunter,  begun  in  1857,  the  last,  the  equestrian  statue  of 
General  Hancock,  finished  in  1910.  Midway  between  these 
is  the  Garfield  monument,  dated  1887.  These  three  are 
fair  examples  of  Ward's  production,  and  it  is  worth  while  to 
consider  here  all  that  went  to  the  making  of  each. 

It  has  sometimes  been  jestingly  declared  that  a  figure  of 
an  American  Indian  is  a  harmless  necessary  youthful  folly 
of  every  American  sculptor,  an  inevitable  piece,  so  to  speak, 
of  intellectual  wild  oats;  and  the  wooden  images  once  sacred 
to  the  guild  of  the  tobacconists  are  adduced  as  proof.  But 
Ward,  by  reason  of  his  pioneer  ancestry,  and  his  early  envi- 
ronment amid  the  outposts  of  our  civilization,  might  well 
take  a  more  serious  view  of  the  case.  To  a  man  whose 
fathers  lived  and  died  in  conflict  with  Indians,  the  American 
Indian  is  neither  a  joke  nor  a  mere  academic  proposition. 
Ward  knew  the  heroic  quality  of  the  vanished  and  van- 
quished inhabitant  —  his  poetic  significance  in  our  national 
epic.  We  read  that  long  after  having  made  the  first  studies 
for  the  Hunter,  he  felt  the  need  of  further  research  as  to 
genuine  aboriginal  types;  that  the  journey  to  the  North- 
west was  accomplished  at  no  little  sacrifice;  and  that  "he 
spent  several  months  among  the  Red  men,  studying  their 
habits,  and  making  wax  models  that  have  since  been 
pronounced  marvels  in  truthful  delineation  of  form  and  char- 
acter. "  Certainly  Ward  put  into  his  Indian  Hunter  some- 
thing far  more  vital  and  lasting  than  would  be  found  in  the 
excellent  academic  Indian  of  some  talented  young  Beaux 
Arts  sculptor  (his  existence  being  assumed  for  the  sake  of 
the  argument)  whose  chief  knowledge  of  Indian  types  has 

46 


AN      APPRECIATION 

been  gained  at  a  Wild  West  show,  and  whose  studies  of  the 
Apache  have  been  made  on  the  Parisian  boulevard  rather 
than  on  the  American  frontier. 

So  too,  in  undertaking  a  monument  to  Garfield,  a  man 
born  one  year  later  than  himself,  in  the  same  State  as  him- 
self, and  with  an  environment  not  greatly  differing  from  his 
own.  Ward  is  by  natural  sympathy  well  adapted  to  the 
enterprise.  He  follows  as  far  as  possible  his  own  maxim 
that  a  man  must  live  in  that  of  which  he  treats;  he  steeps 
himself  in  his  theme,  its  suggestions,  its  poetic  inferences;  his 
acquaintance  with  Garfield  is  supplemented  by  ardent  study 
of  Garfield's  mental  and  physical  characteristics,  and  of  the 
part  he  plays  in  our  history.  The  sculptor  yields  to  the 
general  wish  of  the  Committee  of  the  Army  of  the  Cumber- 
land that  Garfield  should  be  represented  as  the  orator;  but 
he  surrounds  the  orator  with  figures  which  not  only  suggest 
other  and  perhaps  more  significant  phases  of  the  man,  but 
which  also,  being  presentments  of  the  human  form  not 
wholly  tailored  out  of  its  divinity,  add  sculptural  beauty  to 
the  monument.  It  is  Ward's  intention  that  the  Student 
wrestling  with  his  problem  shall  recall  to  us  the  pliant  sensi- 
bility of  youth,  that  the  Warrior  ready  to  meet  force  by 
force  shall  remind  us  of  Garfield's  sturdy  Saxon  ancestry, 
his  courage  and  alertness,  and  that  the  Statesman,  by  his 
classic  dignity  of  garb  and  bearing,  shall  suggest  intellectual 
domination  and  the  calm  of  a  mind  conscious  of  its  own 
power  and  rectitude. 

Such  things  have  been  done  since  the  beginning  of  alle- 
gory; as  one  of  our  sculptors  often  said,  paraphrasing  Buffon, 
"It's  the  way  it's  done  that  makes  the  difference."  It  is 
not  the  subject  that  counts:  choose  the  most  battered  and 
derided  subject  in  existence,  say  Industry  and  the  nine 
Muses;  one  man's  work  gives  you  only  weariness,  while 
another's  unlocks  for  you  the  gates  of  Paradise.  Symbol- 
ism should  be  but  the  brief  and  beautiful  way  of  giving  a 
message;  and  the  normal  mind  should  welcome  any  imagery 

47 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

bringing  fresh  visions  of  beauty  or  power.  Yet  since  the 
days  of  Michael  Angelo  and  the  Renaissance  monument 
builders,  the  use  of  supplementary  symbolic  figures  has  led 
the  sculptor  into  difficulties.  Ward  could  generally  emerge 
triumphant  from  such  difficulties,  because  he  was  guided  by 
his  sense  of  proportion  and  his  love  of  the  golden  mean. 
The  three  allegorical  figures  around  the  base  of  the  Garfield 
are  treated  broadly,  sculpturally,  decoratively ;  they  have  a 
story  to  tell  if  you  wish  it  —  not  otherwise. 

Houdon  spoke  wisely  for  his  own  day  and  generation 
when  he  said  that  no  man  could  hope  to  make  more  than 
one  equestrian  statue  in  a  lifetime.  Our  own  day,  with  its 
increased  specializing  of  human  effort,  not  to  speak  of  its 
improved  methods  in  bronze  casting,  grants  to  the  sculptor 
a  wider  opportunity.  In  the  equestrian  statue  of  Hancock, 
Ward  had  the  general  advantage  of  his  lifelong  love  and 
understanding  of  the  horse  and  horsemanship,  as  well  as  the 
particular  advantage  resulting  from  the  researches  made  by 
him  when  studying  the  Thomas.  At  that  time,  he  had  con- 
sulted, both  for  warning  and  example,  as  well  as  for  the  sake  of 
avoiding  unconscious  reminiscence,  reproductions  of  every 
equestrian  statue  in  the  world  —  the  marvels  of  antiquity 
and  of  the  Renaissance,  and  the  modern  works  that  have  not 
yet  surpassed  these.  It  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  however,  that 
since  the  date  of  the  Thomas,  France,  Germany,  and  Amer- 
ica have  produced  fine  examples  of  equestrian  sculpture; 
and  some  of  them  may  have  been  all  the  finer  because  of  the 
existence  of  the  Thomas.  Concerning  the  completion  of  the 
Hancock,  a  few  words  from  one  of  the  four  addresses  de- 
livered at  the  Ward  Memorial  meeting  of  the  Century  Club 
must  here  suffice.  The  addresses  were  made  by  Frank 
Jewett  Mather,  Jr.,  Edward  Gary,  Herbert  Adams,  and 
William  M.  Sloane;  each  of  these  Centurions,  in  his  own 
characteristic  manner,  rendered  a  feeling  tribute  to  the 
First  Vice-President  of  the  Century  Association.  It  is  the 
sculptor  who  thus  speaks : 

48 


AN      APPRECIATION 

"I  believe  that  the  very  latest  work  of  Ward's  lifetime, 
the  equestrian  statue  of  General  Hancock,  a  work  not  as  yet 
unveiled,  will  stand  as  one  of  the  very  finest  examples  of  his 
achievement.  Its  large  monumental  impressiveness  has 
seldom  been  surpassed.  And  in  these  swift-moving  times 
of  ours,  what  an  example  to  his  fellow  artists  to  live  up  to 
their  highest  ideals  is  his  struggle  throughout  this  enterprise ! 
In  spite  of  advanced  years  and  failing  health,  he  worked  with 
all  his  oldtime  strength  of  conviction,  all  his  passionate  love 
for  his  art.  His  lifelong  habit  of  doing  his  best  was  upon 
him.  After  the  one-quarter  size  model  had  been  com- 
pleted, and  the  figure  of  the  General  finished  in  the  full  size, 
declining  health  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  entrust  the 
work  of  finishing  the  enlargement  of  the  horse  to  a  younger 
man,  a  sculptor  of  the  highest  rank.  Mr.  Ward  had  be- 
come too  ill  to  supervise  these  final  stages,  but  even  then 
his  solicitude  was  of  the  keenest.  He  had  expressed  a  wish 
that  I  should  see  the  work.  Two  days  before  his  farewell 
to  us  I  went  to  him  to  tell  him  that  the  heroic  model 
was  completed,  and  that,  to  my  mind,  this  last  equestrian 
statue  of  his  was  a  masterpiece.  The  valley  of  the  shadow 
was  very  near.  His  eyes  were  glazed  with  suffering,  and 
with  desire  for  the  long  sleep,  yet  his  work  was  still  in  his 
thoughts.  I  shall  not  soon  forget  his  look,  when  on  hearing 
my  words,  he  turned  to  his  wife  and  murmured, 'Now  I  can 
go  in  peace.'  " 

From  these  three  works  of  Ward's,  his  last,  his  first,  and 
that  which  stands  between,  we  may  in  a  measure  judge  all 
the  works  of  his  hands.  His  spirit  of  consecration  never 
failed.  Whether  some  future  generation  may  or  may  not 
scant  its  approval  of  his  labors,  the  present  generation  has 
recorded  its  testimony  that  he  himself  in  the  performance 
of  his  work  scanted  nothing  that  his  generous  equipment 
might  give. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  quote  here  a  few  sentences 
from  each  of  the  other  memorial  addresses  made  at  the 

49 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

Century  Club  in  honor  of  Ward,  for  each  is  an  impressive 
and  beautiful  appreciation. 

"Such  an  art,"  said  Mr.  Mather,  "presupposes  disci- 
pline, clearness  of  aim,  self-knowledge  on  the  part  of  its 
creator.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  appraise  Ward's  singularly 
even  and  meritorious  production.  It  seems  to  me  to  have  a 
high  and  especial  value  in  view  of  prevailing  notions  that 
hysteria  and  the  artistic  temperament  are  convertible  terms. 
Ward's  life  and  purposeful  well-balanced  work  are  an 
effective  protest  against  the  fallacy  that  the  life  artistic 
ranges  between  overt  melodrama  and  inward  tragedy. 
Such  a  life  is  exemplary,  because  it  suggests  that  any  of  us 
who  pursue  the  intellectual  life  with  self-directing  discipline 
are  little  brothers  at  least  of  the  artist;  such  a  life  and  work 
are  doubly  precious  to  the  artist.  They  recall  the  older 
traditions  of  sane,  persistent,  intelligent  endeavor,  the  grand 
manner  of  living  the  life  artistic." 

"I  am  tempted,"  said  Mr.  Cary,  "to  speak  of  Ward  as  a 
typical  Centurion,  but  really  there  is  no  such  thing;  the  con- 
ditions are  too  complex.  But  there  are  Century  types,  and 
Ward  was  one  of  the  most  satisfactory.  He  was  extraor- 
dinarily interesting.  He  was  shrewd  in  his  judgments,  pen- 
etrating, independent,  and  all  his  ideas  had  distinctness, 
and  a  touch  of  distinction.  They  had  a  wide  range,  were 
expressed  with  candor,  and  seemed  to  me  the  output  of  an 
unusually  vigorous  and  unusually  open  mind.  Not  that 
he  was  without  antipathies  and  prejudices.  He  had  a  work- 
ing assortment  of  both;  but  he  did  not  parade  the  former  as 
righteous  indignation  or  the  latter  as  deliberate  convic- 
tions. .  .  .  His  talk  and  his  conduct  were,  it  seemed 
to  me,  like  his  art,  sturdy,  faithful,  fine.  One  test  of  the 
Centurion  he  stood  without  the  least  doubt.  He  gave  to, 
as  he  took  from,  the  Club  in  all  ways  the  very  best  practi- 
cable. He  always  manifested  an  unobtrusive  but  complete 
fidelity  to  the  duties  of  the  various  offices  to  which  he  was 
chosen  by  his  fellow-members. " 

50 


AN      APPRECIATION 

Referring  to  Ohio  as  his  own  birthplace  as  well  as  that  of 
Howells  and  of  Ward,  Mr.  Sloane  said,  "For  a  time  the  two 
vice-presidents  and  the  secretary  of  this  association  were 
New  Yorkers  born  in  Ohio :  we  typified  a  certain  movement 
of  advance  and  recession  whereby  the  metropolis  selects 
what  it  can  use."     He  describes  Ward  thus: 

"Though  he  has  passed  into  the  splendid  and  illustrious 
community  of  our  dead,  there  is  not  one  of  us  but  can  make 
him  present  to  the  eye  of  our  memory  and  imagination,  here 
and  now  at  this  table,  where  he  so  often  sat  and  stood.  He 
was  a  fine  figure  of  an  American,  vigorous,  supple  in  his 
frame,  in  later  years  a  trifle  bowed,  but  always  erect  in 
spirit  and  self-reliant  in  bearing.  His  brow  was  massive, 
his  eyes  keen  and  observant,  his  nostrils  full  and  broad,  and 
there  was  a  play  around  his  mouth  and  chin  which  argued 
the  nervous  readiness  of  a  man  able  to  uphold  the  beliefs 
which  he  held.  Perhaps  of  all  his  limbs  his  arms  and  par- 
ticularly his  hands  were  the  most  characteristic,  the  hands 
that  obey  the  behests  of  the  mind  but  give  limit  and  pro- 
portion to  its  ideals." 

It  may  here  be  remarked  in  parenthesis  that,  in  spite  of 
the  differences  supposed  to  exist  between  the  Celtic  and 
Latin  types,  many  artists  have  observed  a  strong  resem- 
blance between  Ward's  head  and  that  of  Michael  Angelo, 
a  resemblance  due  to  the  keen  eye,  the  firmly  modeled 
nose,  the  pugnacious  mouth  and  chin,  and  the  high  cheek 
bones. 

Mr.  Sloane' s  address  continues  with  a  scholarly  appre- 
ciation of  Ward's  art.  "The  history  of  sculpture  in  its 
largest  outline  is  an  oscillation  between  the  suggestion  to 
the  beholder  of  indefinite  emotions  and  the  expression  by 
limit  and  proportion  of  objective  perfection.  The  Orient 
had  its  Cyclopean,  heroic  masses,  its  promise  of  form,  its 
subjective,  impressional,  intentional  message  of  the  beyond. 
By  ages  of  struggle  and  effort  there  was  evolved  the  statue 
in  the  round,  which  can  be  grasped  in  all  its   beauty   by 

51 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

secular  minds:  definite,  typical,  balanced,  complete.  It  was 
a  long  journey  from  the  Memnon  to  the  Hermes.  From  the 
Greeks  to  the  Americans  is  another  evolution.  Within  it 
there  is  the  low  relief  and  the  high,  the  grotesque  and  the 
monumental,  the  mechanical  and  the  sentimental.  But  the 
sculpture  of  sensibility  has  mainly  harked  to  the  classical, 
though  we  are  again  feeling  the  influences  of  the  romantic 
and  even  of  the  oriental  in  a  strange  eclecticism  which  seeks 
to  combine  both.  Ward  knew  nothing  of  European  studios 
during  his  formative  period,  nor  of  the  Greek  statues  in  their 
originals.  What  reading  and  the  study  of  casts  could  do  he 
did  not  disdain,  and  in  the  main  his  influences  were  classical. 
But  though  familiar  with  the  rules  of  his  craft  and  obedient 
to  them,  when  he  transcended  them  it  was  with  a  singularly 
independent  power.  His  work  is  objective  to  the  highest 
degree  and  he  is  himself  in  it  to  address  an  audience  which 
understands,  to  excite  emotions  that  are  not  feigned,  to 
arouse  aspirations  which  may  be  realized." 


52 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WARD'S  lifework  included  many  tasks  other  than 
those  of  the  fortunate  artist  absorbed  in  his  own 
daily  round  of  creating  and  interpreting.  What  is 
my  art  doing  for  my  country?  was  the  constant  question  of 
his  soul.  His  acceptance  of  the  Presidency  of  the  newly 
formed  National  Sculpture  Society  in  1893  was  one  of  the 
many  instances  of  his  patriotic  spirit.  The  honors  and  the 
penalties  of  office  had  long  been  familiar  to  him.  From 
1864  until  his  death,  in  1910,  he  was  a  member  of  the 
National  Academy  of  Design,  and  of  the  Century  Associa- 
tion; in  1874,  he  was  chosen  President  of  the  Academy,  the 
sole  instance  in  which  this  honor  has  been  accorded  to  a 
sculptor;  he  was  Vice-President  of  the  Century  from  1906 
until  his  death.  The  list  of  organizations  which  he  honored 
by  active  membership  is  indeed  long  and  varied,  ranging 
from  Academies  to  Zoological  Societies.  Some  of  these 
bodies,  as  the  Century,  the  Union  League,  the  Lambs, 
claimed  him  upon  his  social  or  civic  side;  others  appealed  to 
his  sympathies  in  matters  archeological  or  historical;  others 
sought  him  for  his  sportsman  quality.  But  it  was  particu- 
larly to  the  many  Associations,  Federations,  Institutes, 
Leagues  and  Societies  devoted  to  the  fine  arts  that  he  gave 
his  constructive  ability,  his  enthusiasm  for  high  ideals,  his 
unswerving  conscientiousness,  his  dogged  perseverance. 
He  had  been  a  Trustee  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  and 

53 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

later  became  a  Trustee  and  life  member  of  the  American 
Academy  at  Rome.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Architectural 
League  of  New  York,  the  Municipal  Art  Society  of  New 
York,  the  Fine  Arts  Federation  of  New  York,  and  the 
National  Arts  Club;  he  was  made  an  honorary  member  of 
the  American  Institute  of  Architects  in  1895,  and  a  member 
of  the  National  Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters  in  1898.  Emi- 
nently a  "man's  man"  was  Mr.  Ward;  gregarious,  and 
delighting  in  the  give  and  take  of  the  council  table. 

The  difficult  and  often  thankless  labors  of  an  important 
member  of  various  advisory  committees  were  his  natural 
portion;  he  was  appointed  upon  the  Advisory  Committee 
on  the  Fine  Arts  to  represent  the  city  of  New  York  at  the 
World's  Columbian  Exposition  in  1892,  and,  ten  years  later 
was  a  member  of  the  Advisory  Committee  of  Sculptors  for 
the  Louisiana  Purchase  Exposition.  As  President  of  the 
Sculpture  Society,  he  was  called  upon,  in  the  second  year 
of  the  Society's  existence,  to  give  his  advice  in  the  highly 
important  matter  of  the  sculptural  decorations  for  the  new 
Library  of  Congress,  in  Washington.  In  this  duty  Saint- 
Gaudens  and  Warner  were  associated  with  him.  "It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  the  sculptors  to  whom  these  works  have  been 
allotted  will  acquit  themselves  with  such  credit  that  the 
Government  will  be  induced  to  decorate  every  public  build- 
ing it  may  hereafter  erect,"  said  Ward;  and  certainly  the 
great  work  of  decorating  the  Congressional  Library  gave  a 
new  and  marvelous  impetus  both  to  our  painting  and  to 
our  sculpture.  The  sculptural  scheme,  as  is  well  known, 
included  for  the  exterior,  nine  colossal  busts,  three  pairs  of 
spandrels,  three  important  bronze  doors;  for  the  interior, 
eight  colossal  emblematic  figures,  twelve  heroic  portrait 
statues  in  bronze,  one  large  clock  with  sustaining  figures, 
and  many  other  works.  Our  best  sculptors  are  represented ; 
as  a  whole,  their  work  here  is  of  a  very  high  order.  Two 
of  the  most  beautiful  and  vigorous  of  the  heroic  bronze 
statues  are  by  Paul  Wayland  Bartlett,  a  sculptor  whose 

54 


AN      APPRECIATION 

genius  was  greatly  appreciated  by  Ward,  and  whose  col- 
laboration he  enjoyed  in  the  pediment  of  the  New  York 
Stock  Exchange. 

Advisory  work  of  this  sort  may  well  be  called  construc- 
tive counsel;  less  pleasing  to  his  genial  nature  were  the  no 
less  necessary  duties  of  destructive  criticism,  but  these  too 
he  performed  as  part  of  his  service,  accepting  with  them  the 
acute  discomforts  that  often  came  in  their  train.  As  Chair- 
man of  an  advisory  committee  considering  the  selection  of 
a  certain  model  for  an  equestrian  statue,  he  writes,  "Our 
mission  would  have  been  more  agreeable  could  we  have 
aided  in  the  immediate  solution  of  this  question;  but  we 
were  prompted  by  a  feeling  that  no  work  of  this  importance 
should  take  the  risk  of  not  representing  the  best  talent  of 
the  day.  We  cannot  refrain  from  expressing  regret  that 
some  method  or  system  has  not  been  arrived  at  by  which 
the  Government  could  be  assured  of  the  best  results  when 
it  oilers  such  desirable  commissions."  Constructive  ser- 
vice appealed  far  more  strongly  to  his  tastes  than  could  any 
manner  of  destructive  or  prohibitive  action.  In  speaking 
of  the  Art  Commission  created  under  the  Greater  New  York 
Charter,  a  body  whose  duties  are  largely  those  of  passing 
upon  all  works  of  art  and  permanent  structures  to  be  ac- 
quired by  the  city,  by  purchase,  gift  or  otherwise,  he  said, 
"Thus  far  we  have  progressed,  but  the  ideal  is  still  ahead  of 
us!  This  Art  Commission  has  only  judicial  power,  and  the 
artists  are  in  too  small  a  minority.  This  Commission  should 
have  power  to  initiate  schemes,  to  establish  a  general  system 
of  adornment  for  the  city,  and  to  direct  all  that  pertains  to 
its  artistic  appearance. " 

Ward  loved  his  responsibilities,  and  accepted  them  quite 
as  much  for  what  he  could  give  as  for  what  he  might  gain. 
One  steady  purpose  actuates  him,  the  upbuilding  of  our  art. 
Of  the  young  Sculpture  Society,  he  writes  in  his  report  for 
the  year  1896,  "Whatever  reputation  it  may  attain  shall  be 
established  by  its  deeds,  not  by  empty  promises."     Almost 

55 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

a  quarter  of  a  century  before  that  time,  he  had  said,  as 
President  of  the  Academy,  "There  is  no  rest  for  the  individ- 
ual artist  until  his  faculties  are  dead :  there  must  be  no  rest 
for  the  Academy  while  this  Republic  lives,  for  that  is  the 
duration  of  her  life."  The  same  spirit  of  healthy  unrest 
shapes  both  utterances.  More  than  a  generation  ago,  Ward 
was  urging  upon  the  Academy  cohorts  the  same  counsels 
they  are  hearing  to-day,  touching  the  necessity  of  a  deeper 
conviction  and  a  closer  brotherhood  in  their  efforts  to  obtain 
a  new  and  larger  building.  "How  we  shall  accomplish 
this,"  says  his  report  for  1875,  "is  a  matter  of  careful 
thought  and  work  for  the  next  year.  The  money  is  in  the 
city,  to  be  had  for  the  proper  asking:  but,  fellow  Academi- 
cians, we  cannot  ask  for  this  money  while  our  own  hearts 
are  cold  or  lukewarm  toward  the  Academy."  Had  there 
been  men  enough  of  Ward's  enthusiastic  temper,  that  "next 
year"  might  not  have  stretched  out  into  something  like  two 
score  years!  It  seems  scarcely  possible  that  the  thought 
expressed  in  this  report  dates  from  our  pre-Centennial  days. 
Able  leader  though  he  was,  he  was  not,  like  the  Cicero 
described  by  Brutus,  constitutionally  unable  to  follow  any- 
thing that  other  men  begin.  When  Charles  R.  Lamb,  en- 
thusiast for  the  City  Beautiful,  originated  the  idea  of  the 
Dewey  Arch  as  a  dignified  artistic  feature  of  New  York's 
tribute  to  the  hero  of  Manila,  on  the  occasion  of  his  visit  to 
the  city  in  1899,  Ward  gave  that  idea  his  cordial  support," 
and  side  by  side  with  younger  sculptors,  somehow  found 
time  to  make  his  own  contribution  to  a  notable  work.  To 
him  was  assigned  the  great  group  crowning  the  Arch,  and 
representing  Naval  Victory,  erect  in  her  chariot  drawn  by 
six  sea-horses,  the  treatment  of  the  central  figure  being 
frankly  inspired  by  that  of  the  Nike  of  Samothrace.  This 
Arch,  though  a  temporary  monument,  lives  in  the  perma- 
nent records  of  our  time,  an  extraordinary  instance  of  the 
results  of  artistic  co-operation.  "We  wasted  not  a  word,  a 
dollar  or  an  hour  in  diplomacy,  but  acted  on  the  assumption 

56 


AN      APPRECIATION 

that  our  position  needed  no  apology;  that  we  might  expect 
support  so  far  as  our  plans  commended  themselves  to  those 
in  charge."  As  President  of  the  Sculpture  Society,  Mr. 
Ward  thus  congratulated  his  fellow  sculptors:  "Your  con- 
ception of  the  idea  was  brilliant,  your  enthusiasm  was  splen- 
did, your  humility  the  promise  of  exaltation.  Many  have 
remarked,  'You  artists  builded  better  than  you  knew';  they 
did  not  know  that  we  'knew',  better  than  opportunity  had 
ever  allowed  us  to  build!" 

In  looking  over  a  mass  of  Ward's  letters,  addresses  and 
reports,  all  bearing  upon  the  art  of  our  country,  a  sculptor 
lately  said,  "We  younger  men  little  knew  how  heroically 
Ward  worked  for  us  and  for  our  art:  most  of  us  were  too 
untrained  in  the  organizing  work  which  he  did  so  well,  and 
apparently  so  easily,  to  realize  that  such  work  could  not 
have  been  done  without  unremitting,  unselfish  endeavor." 

Throughout  his  career,  his  high  sense  of  personal  respon- 
sibility made  it  impossible  for  him  not  to  give  time  and 
thought  when  counsel  was  asked.  Thus,  concerning  a 
Lincoln  monument  projected  shortly  after  the  President's 
assassination  —  a  monument  which  he  himself,  on  account  of 
other  work,  is  unable  to  undertake,  he  writes,  on  being  re- 
quested to  give  the  Committee  the  benefit  of  his  ideas: 
"First  as  to  the  statue.  Lincoln  does  not  appear  to  me  as 
a  bold  leader  at  all,  nor  characteristically  an  ambitious  man. 
He  was  not  the  projector  or  originator  of  the  great  idea 
associated  with  his  administration,  neither  did  he,  solely, 
discover  the  method  by  which  the  idea  was  consummated. 
A  man  of  good  heart,  keen  intuition,  and  great  moral  cour- 
age, but  with  a  strong  regard  for  estabUshed  law,  he 
wished  to  know  the  hopes  and  desires  of  the  people  before 
giving  them  voice.  .  .  .  Slow  in  processes,  he  hesitated 
into  immovable  decisions.  .  .  .  He  was  the  medium 
through  which  the  spirit  of  Liberty  worked  a  grand  revolu- 
tion. Therefore  I  should  represent  Lincoln  in  an  attitude 
of  great  repose,  [without]  passion  —  almost  listening.     To 

57 


JOHN      QUINGY      ADAMS      WARD 

represent  him  in  group,  as  simply  Emancipator,  would  be 
as  doubtful  art  as  it  would  be  doubtful  history." 

Here  again  is  the  phrase  of  the  great  writers.  "Slow 
in  processes,  he  hesitated  into  immovable  decisions"  is  a 
masterly  sentence  in  the  grand  style,  and  with  the  rhythm 
proper  to  prose.  Turning  from  the  manner  to  the  matter  of 
Ward's  letter,  written  in  1867,  we  note  that  his  conception 
of  the  sculptured  Lincoln  is  not  by  any  means  that  which 
then  prevailed,  but  rather  that  which  prevails  at  present: 
the  best  of  our  recent  statues  of  Lincoln  show  him  in  an 
"attitude  of  great  repose,  without  passion,  almost  listening, " 
as  suggested  by  Ward  years  ago,  when  it  was  the  fashion  of 
the  day  to  show  Lincoln  in  the  very  act  of  strenuous  eman- 
cipation, and  with  the  word  "Proclamation"  writ  large  on 
his  extended  scroll.  The  letter  concludes  with  hints  as  to 
ways  and  means  whereby  "incidents  and  events,"  often 
the  main  objects  of  a  committee's  anxious  thought,  might 
be  illustrated  in  a  series  of  reliefs  around  the  base  of  the 
statue,  giving  richness  and  boldness  to  a  work  in  which  the 
statue  itself  would  be  spared  the  necessity  of  telling  an 
anecdote. 

The  relation  between  sculptor  and  patron,  like  every 
human  relation,  changes  with  circumstances.  Comedy  or 
tragedy,  the  drama  goes  on,  but  the  situations  vary.  Each 
new  commission  has  its  own  peculiar  problem,  each  new 
committee  its  own  peculiar  psychology,  each  new  situation 
its  own  peculiar  appeal  or  perplexity,  or  joy  or  despair. 
Should  any  one  zealous  for  the  guidance  of  young  sculptors 
ever  compile  a  series  of  letters  from  a  well-known  sculptor 
to  his  patrons,  many  of  Ward's  letters  would  be  found 
models  of  broad  thought  and  clear  expression,  of  perfect 
sincerity  and,  what  is  more  remarkable  in  a  man  of 
great  directness  of  character,  natural  tact.  His  imagina- 
tion easily  compasses  the  other  person's  point  of  view. 
He  has  of  course  his  share  of  human  prejudice;  but  his  large 
sanity  would  laugh  at  the  pretentious  attitude   of   those 

58 


AN      APPRECIATION 

artists  who,  in  their  intercourse  with  their  fellow  men,  as- 
sume themselves  to  be  made  of  some  fabulous  superior  stuff 
defying  analysis  and  exempt  from  explanation.  However 
uncompromising  in  his  artistic  conscientiousness,  he  does 
not  disdain  explanation,  but  even  deems  it  a  duty.  As 
in  the  extract  just  given,  ideas  set  forth  in  many  of  his 
early  letters  prevail  to-day,  and  prove  his  quality  of  pre- 
cursor. 

Known  as  a  man  of  ideas,  and  of  honest  and  picturesque 
statement,  he  was  often  approached  by  the  copy-seeker 
with  the  classic  request  for  a  thousand  words  upon  one  of 
those  subjects  on  which  artists  are  supposed  to  meditate 
diligently,  such  as  —  What  Practical  Good  Is  Accom- 
plished by  Art,  or  What  Constitutes  Beauty  in  Woman,  or, 
still  more  haunting  question,  What  Is  Art,  and  What  Is 
Obscenity?  He  groaned  in  spirit,  but  thought  it  right  to 
respond,  whenever  the  question  seemed  to  him  to  have  any 
practical  bearing.  He  made  many  vigorous  pleas  for  art 
education;  but  his  message  must  not  be  taken,  he  insists, 
as  "a  call  for  thousands  of  young  people  to  rush  into  art 
for  its  direct  lucrative  results.  Unless,  with  true  artistic 
humility,  they  are  willing  after  proper  training  to  take 
positions  in  the  industries  where  art  is  applied,  the  great 
majority  of  them  will  not  alone  be  doomed  to  disappoint- 
ment, but  they  will  in  no  wise  benefit  the  community." 

In  1909,  the  Architectural  League  of  New  York  estab- 
lished two  medals  of  honor  for  award  for  distinguished  merit, 
to  sculptors  and  mural  painters  represented  in  its  annual 
exhibition.  The  first  two  artists  thus  honored  were  John 
La  Farge  and  John  Quincy  Adams  Ward.  Only  a  short 
time  before,  in  an  address  given  at  a  meeting  of  the  National 
Arts  Club,  in  honor  of  La  Farge,  Ward  had  saluted  his  old 
friend  as  "the  lover  of  beauty,  the  grand  artisan,  the  great 
artist,  .  .  .  whose  writings  are  most  learned  tributes 
of  a  master  of  the  present  to  the  masters  of  the  past."  A 
short  time  afterward,  both  painter  and  sculptor  had  joined 

59 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

those  masters  of  the  past.  Men  of  diametrically  opposed 
artistic  qualities,  they  were  as  one  in  their  life  purpose ;  and 
they  passed  on  together,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  in  their  last 
search  for  the  beautiful.  What  changes  had  they  not  wit- 
nessed together,  this  side  of  the  great  change!  Other  lofty 
figures  in  the  world  of  American  art  were  passing  also,  in 
point  of  time  not  far  removed  from  these  two.  Within  a 
few  short  years,  we  have  lost  two  great  architects,  White 
and  McKim;  two  great  painters.  Homer  and  La  Farge;  two 
great  sculptors,  Saint-Gaudens  and  Ward.  We  have  lost 
the  cheer  of  their  bodily  presence,  but  we  have  not  lost  the 
light  they  lifted  up.  All  were  men  whose  better  part  lives 
greatly,  even  after  death. 

Ward  had  lived  to  see  much  of  the  neo-classicism  of  our 
"Marble  Faun"  moment  relegated  bit  by  bit  to  the  gentle 
shelter  of  dim  museum-aisles.  It  was  a  long  day,  that  day 
of  the  misty  morning  when  the  nervous  young  knuckles  of 
the  boy  from  Ohio  rapped  at  a  master's  studio  door  —  day 
of  the  golden  noon  when  beauty  wreathed  itself  singing  on 
the  green  around  a  triumphant  new  statue  of  .an  old  bard  — 
day  of  the  tranquil  evening  when  the  sculptor  laureate 
received  from  a  jury  of  his  peers  the  golden  tribute  to  dis- 
tinguished merit.  In  all  that  period  of  time,  many  indeed 
were  the  nine-days'  marvels  of  American  plastic  art  that 
swam  into  our  ken,  only  to  become  as  warnings,  not  ex- 
amples. Small  wonder  then  that  Ward,  in  his  autumn  of  life, 
was  not  greatly  perturbed  by  the  neo-impressionistic  mani- 
festations of  those  who  have  followed  with  the  greatest 
ardor  the  least  significant  maxims  of  the  more  eccentric 
masters.  He  could  afford  to  smile  whimsically  upon  the 
current  slang  of  the  atelier,  from  phrases  like  "the  spiritu- 
alizing of  the  marble,"  of  the  Victorian-Italian- American 
period,  down  to  fantastic  catch-words  like  "fatty  ends," 
popular  in  our  so-called  "fm  de  siecle"  days,  and  "blond 
modeling"  or  "palpitating  surface"  heard  only  yesterday. 
He  had  in  his  time  seen  many  men  adjudged,  if  not  to  death, 

60 


AN      APPRECIATION 

at  least  to  temporary  defeat,  "for  want  of  well  pronouncing 
'Shibboleth.'" 

If  he  himself  had  a  shibboleth  of  his  own,  it  was  that  of 
"American  art  for  the  American  people."  He  used  vari- 
ous quaint  figures  of  speech  to  bring  this  thought  of  his 
home  to  the  mind  of  the  hearer.  "He  who  thinks  too  long 
in  an  adopted  language,"  he  would  say,  "will  have  for- 
gotten his  mother  thought. "  Yet  his  sense  of  humor  would 
permit  him  to  smile  occasionally  at  his  own  slogan,  as  at 
another  man's,  and  he  himself  would  have  been  the  first  to 
acknowledge  that  the  quality  of  indigenousness  is  not  the 
sole  requisite  for  a  national  art.  The  belief  that  "a  man 
must  live  in  that  of  which  he  treats"  is  upon  the  whole  a 
sane  one;  yet  few  artists  would  be  found  strong  enough  to 
cling  to  it  as  tenaciously  as  did  Ward,  without  great  hazard 
to  their  highest  artistic  development;  and  he  himself,  but 
for  his  own  immense  artistic  curiosity,  might  have  suffered 
loss.  He  never  underrated  the  value  of  study  abroad  as  a 
part  of  an  artist's  equipment;  but  any  plan  for  prolonged 
residence  abroad  seemed  to  him  out  of  harmony  with  proper 
patriotic  ideals,  and  he  frankly  said  so.  His  deep  interest 
in  our  American  Academy  at  Rome  would  never  make  him 
lukewarm  toward  our  National  Academy  of  Design,  or  our 
National  Sculpture  Society. 

Of  late  years  it  has  been  the  fashion  for  artists  and  other 
folk  across  the  water  to  come  over  and  tell  us  things  about 
ourselves  —  what  we  do,  and  how  we  do  it,  and  wherein  we 
are  justified  or  not  in  our  continued  existence.  It  is  for  us 
to  listen  wisely,  and  learn  all  we  may  from  the  Italian 
sculptor  or  French  painter  or  Irish  player  who  visits  our 
borders.  An  English  painter  who  has  just  come  to  us  says 
with  regret  that  he  cannot  find  in  our  art  any  of  the 
national  individuality  that  we  ought  long  ago  to  have 
attained,  if  we  are  indeed  and  in  truth  a  people  of  vitality 
and  creative  force,  a  nation  thinking  and  speaking  for  itself. 
He  chides  us  because  we  have  founded  no  school  of  our  own, 

61 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

but  are  still  accepting  traditions  already  decadent  in  the 
Old  World.  Many  of  our  own  artists  —  those  of  them  who 
are  taking  thought  for  our  future  as  well  as  for  our  present 
—  believe  that  the  time  is  drawing  near  when  we  shall  give 
far  deeper  consideration  than  we  do  now  to  the  subject  of 
our  art  as  the  truthful  expression  of  our  life  and  character 
as  a  people.  When  that  times  comes,  the  education  of  our 
young  art  students  must  be  received,  even  more  largely 
than  at  present,  under  American  influences.  The  "living 
quality"  in  our  art  is  something  that  subsequent  ages  may 
talk  of  more  wisely  than  we  ourselves ;  we  merely  know  in  a 
general  way  that  the  permanent  things  in  the  art  of  past 
ages  are  the  things  that  have  most  truthfully  reflected  the 
life  and  the  ideals  of  the  land  that  gave  them  birth.  Thus 
the  pendulum  of  modern  thought  is  swinging  back  to  the 
point  of  view  held  valiantly  by  Ward ;  a  further  evidence  of 
his  prophetic  vision. 

It  has  not  been  the  purpose  here  to  point  out  in  Ward's 
large  work  its  natural  human  limitations,  but  rather  to 
consider  it  as  he  himself  would  have  considered  any  artist's 
work,  for  its  worth  in  the  world.  Vainly,  however  nobly, 
shall  a  man  regret  that  he  has  but  one  life  to  give  to  his 
chosen  task.  The  fig  and  the  olive  are  good,  but  it  is  writ- 
ten that  the  fig  tree  cannot  bear  olive  berries,  neither  a  vine 
figs.  What  Ward  has  done  in  his  unique  place  in  our  sculp- 
ture is  to-day  more  important  to  us  than  what  it  was  not 
his  part  or  lot  to  do.  His  rugged  genius  rightly  chose  to 
express  itself  in  the  upright,  downright,  rich  and  massive 
round  —  in  the  colossal  equestrian  statue  and  the  lofty 
monument  rather  than  in  the  delicate  vibrations  of  low 
relief.  His  soul  sought  and  found  the  straightforward 
rather  than  the  subtle.  A  natural  interpreter  of  the  man 
on  horseback,  the  soldier  armed  for  battle,  the  statesman, 
the  captain  of  industry,  he  wisely  refrained  from  such  fields 
as  that  of  the  charming  intimate  sympathetic  portrait  in 
relief  —  a  field  in  which  modern  sculptors  both  here  and  in 

62 


AN      APPRECIATION 

France  have  rivaled  the  master  medalists  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance. 

His  vivid  consciousness  of  his  own  personal  responsibil- 
ity as  an  artist  was  joined  to  a  large  sense  of  outside  values, 
and  fortunately  for  us,  his  interest  in  his  own  day's  work 
included  the  influence  of  that  work  on  his  country's  prog- 
ress, on  human  uplift.  Art  for  art's  sake  was  dear  to  him, 
but  art  for  life's  sake  was  doubly  so.  Had  he  lived  and 
moved  and  worked  in  an  older  country  than  ours,  under  a 
mellower  civilization,  the  beautiful  and  vigorous  impress 
of  his  mind  upon  his  time  would  have  won  for  him  the  re- 
wards and  honors  and  titles  that  older  governments  confer 
on  genius,  and  the  faithful  stewardship  thereof.  We  Amer- 
icans are  wont  to  speak  lightly  of  Old  World  academic 
honors  —  of  the  ribboned  buttonhole  that  flourishes  in 
France,  Belgium  and  Italy,  of  the  cumbrous  polysyllabic 
titles  accompanying  the  name  of  the  German  artist,  of  the 
baronetcy  conferred  upon  the  worthy  British  sculptor  before 
he  lays  down  his  clay  for  good  and  for  all.  But  are  these 
honors  as  empty  as  we  pretend  ?  Do  they  not  often  win 
for  their  possessors  a  certain  just  due  of  prestige,  and,  what 
is  more  important,  a  higher  opportunity  for  usefulness  in 
the  best  years  of  life,  a  surer  protection  from  undeserved 
distress  when  usefulness  is  no  more  ?  Our  young  Republic 
honors  her  soldiers;  the  Arms  already  receive  their  reward. 
The  Letters  and  the  Arts,  no  doubt,  are  to  be  taken  up  in  a 
later  lesson. 

To-day,  however,  the  achievement  of  Ward  may  well 
rest  content  to  speak  for  itself;  surely  his  life  work  has 
shown  that  he  was  of  those,  who,  in  the  quaint  phrase  of 
Cennino  Cennini,  "follow  the  arts  from  nobleness  of  mind." 
He  not  only  shaped  the  monuments  of  dead  heroes,  but 
molded  the  minds  of  living  men.  His  "personality"  —  that 
mysterious  essence  which  during  a  man's  lifetime  must  be 
bounded  within  a  mere  "waste  mold"  —  has  to-day  a 
larger  influence  because  in  his  work  he  was  greatly  able 

63 


JOHN      QUINCY      ADAMS      WARD 

to  lay  aside  that  which  we  often  think  of  as  personality, 
self. 

In  his  labors  we  see  reflected  the  better  and  higher 
spirit  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  an  age  which  (paradox- 
ically enough,  since  it  is  the  voice  of  awakened  idealism 
speaking  within  us)  we  constantly  deplore  as  material- 
istic. It  will  matter  little,  in  all  our  talk  of  him,  whether 
we  call  this  great  American  sculptor  an  idealist  gifted 
with  intensely  practical  vision,  or  a  realist  to  whom  ideals 
were  dearer  than  aught  else  that  life  could  give.  While 
we  speak,  his  work  puts  on  immortality. 


64 


THE   ILLUSTRATIONS 


JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS  WARD  IN  HIS  STUDIO,   I907 


FRAGMENT  FROM  PEACE  PLEDGE 


SHAKESPEARE 


GENERAL  THOMAS 


GENERAL  LAFAYETTE 


GENERAL  WASHINGTON 


•  m 


THE  GARFIELD  MONUMENT 


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^1 

■i    .-1^. 

^ '          (^jMr 

HORACE  GREELEY 


ALEXANDER  LYMAN   HOLLEY 


HENRY  WARD  BEECHER 


GENERAL  HANCOCK 


AUGUST  BELMONT,  SR. 


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